January 1939. Germany. A country holding its breath. Death has never had so much work. And there will be even more.
A mother takes nine-year-old Liesel Meminger and her younger brother to foster parents near Munich, because their father is no more—he was taken by the breath of the foreign and terrible word “communist,” and in the mother’s eyes the girl sees fear of the same fate. On the way, Death visits the boy and for the first time notices Liesel.
So the girl ends up on Himmel Street—Heaven Street. Whoever came up with that name had a healthy sense of humor. Not that it was literally hell there. No. But it’s also not heaven.
“The Book Thief” became a publishing sensation. Its circulation in English alone exceeded 1.5 million copies. The novel has been in the world’s top-30 bookseller rankings of Amazon for several years now.