Marcus Zusak

Our heroine is a 9 year old girl called Leisel Meminger. Leisel is sent to a foster family after her brother dies and her mother has, ominously, been “sent away”. Her life is changed forever when, by her brother’s grave, she picks up a book hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, and taking it is her first act of book theft. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be taken. As Markus says, the narrator of the book is Death which, as soon as you think about it, seems oddly fitting for a book about Nazi Germany. There is a quietly radical element to the book, too, which shows how difficult life was for ordinary Germans during this period. A moving, intelligent page-turner.

Read by Myself - Highly recommended