La cosa nella letteratura

The Book Thief , by Markus Zusak

"The Book Thief" is a novel, published in 2005 by the australian author Markus Zusak. This book, which the author's most popular book, rapidily became an international bestseller and was translated into several languages because of its sudden global sucess.
This story happens in the Nazi era, and portrays the story of Liesel Meminger. After the death of Liesel's young brother, she arrives at the home of her new foster family, because of ther father's abandonment and the fact that her mother was comunist, which was forbidden at the time. During her time there she is exposed to the horrors of the Nazi regime. In her foster family, the father was a former german soldier during the world war I, but develops a close relationship with Liesel, becoming a source of strength, love and support to the main characther. The mother is also a loving wife and mother but has a bit of a temper, often being sharp-tongued and abrasive. The father teaches Liesel to read, and together the two help each other with reading and writing, and Liesel becomes fascinated by the power of words. She begins to reconignize the power of writing and sharing the written word, and not only begins to steal books that the Nazis are looking to destroy but  also writes her own story and shares the power of language with Max, a jewish gard that the family hired.
The success of this amazing book lead it to be adapted to a feature film with the same name in 2013, that was also a big success.



The importance of the book in this specific book:

In this story, the books are not only present in the title but also take a main role in the action, and represent a very important part of the message the book wants to pass. In this period of time, jewish people and all the people that were persecuted by the Nazis were living in fear and had no freedom at all but the books represented an escape of the awful situation that was happening around her and her family. The nazis were trying to burn and destroy several books and people were severely punished if they didn't cooperate but they had such an emotional importance that were worthy of this girl efforts to steal them. Even today, several people read books to ease their minds, to relax, and as a getaway for the stresses and troubles of life. This book really portrays the importance that books had and have in people's lifes and how books can help people through though situations.