Markus Zusak, The Author of the book thief
When Zusak was young he heard a lot of stories about the holocaust from his German mother and Austrian father. Zusak took this story that his mother gave him about a herd of Jews walking through her street, and how a young boy gave one of them some bread and how they were both whipped and he put it into The Book Thief. Zusak thought about how he never heard about things like that in the stories and documents and decided that it should be heard. Zusak's father had also told him a tale that Zusak thought should be heard. His fathers tale was about how he use to skip Nazi training because he had a friend who suffered under the hands of Hitler and his people. With this story Zusak created Rudy, the wild best friend of Liesel. With these stories Zusak started to create his book. Thus, came up the thought about a girl named Liesel who fell in love with words and her foster family of Nazi rebels. To portray all his work Zusak decided to use Death as his narrator. Zusak came up with this idea when he was in Tasmania in a river and he thought to himself that he was surrounded by water. This made him remember a line in the book " A River Runs Through It" ,that says, " I am haunted by waters". Zusak then thought about death and how death is haunted by what he sees humans do to each other , Death is haunted by humans. Zusak said that he could relate to death the most while writing The Book Thief because just like death he could portray his voice better there, watching as life surrounds him while he watches it unravel. Mark Zusak's purpose was to Show a different part of the Holocaust, portray what life was like outside of the fences, and to show how not everything was as okay as it seemed (motherdaughterbookclub).