Have you ever got a book hangover? I am having one as I write this blog post. Maybe it is normal, to feel melodramatic and thoughtful, to scrutinize some aspects of the book and the fates of its characters. Maybe a soulful book is supposed to make you suffer from a kind of withdrawal. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak could make anyone bawl towards the end. Even if you had seen the movie and knew how it ends.
The book was a gift from one of my dear friends, almost two years ago. I tossed it aside thinking I’ll finish my unread collections (which happens to be a lot) first. And now I finally found my way reading through Zusak’s tale of the book thief and how she escaped death three times.
Holocaust, death, and suffering are almost synonymous with each other. Well, until I read The Book Thief. Because Zusak takes a different perception of death, he humanizes it. Here, humans haunt death. Human is more evil and heartless than the Mr Death, the narrator. He says he neither carries a sickle nor does he have skull-like facial features. He does wear a black robe when it’s cold, and that’s is understandable. Death is humane enough to mourn over a person dying, he sees the good in people, he sees the book thief and her books. I love how Death gladly steps over Hitler’s broken photo frame to collect a dying soul on its back. Death consoles the skeletal-yet-living jews in camps….the ones who plead to relieve them from their dehumanizing misery. Death promises that he’ll be back for them. He is more human than those propaganda spewing Nazis.
A lot happens in this story- with German kids who are oblivious to the horror around, a foreshadowing narrator, and more importantly, a lot of thieving. But I am not getting into those details. As for me, the final bombing on Himmel Street, the death of ALL (literally) characters except the book thief left me feeling high and dry.
The world is a devious old place with more plague and fuhrers. What if it is me (or you)… all alone, chosen to live after an unforeseeable calamity?
YES I WRITE HERE 
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