Authors and After Words

Markus Zusak was born in 1975 in Sydney, Australia, which is where his parents emigrated shortly after the Second World War. His mother came from Germany and his father from Austria; both grew up under the Nazis. When they arrived in Sydney, they settled in a working class district where Zusak’s father plied his trade as a commercial house painter. Markus, the youngest of four children, gave up following in his father’s footsteps because he felt that he had no talent for the job. Luckily, he has a huge talent for writing, achieving success early with stories of working class brothers and other young men making their way in a marginal world. All of his work is tied either to his own experience growing up on the rough side of the tracks, or, in the case of The Book Thief (2006), on the experiences of his parents growing up in a time of war.

Growing up Brothers

In Fighting Ruben Wolfe (2001), two brothers of high school age (Ruben, the older and Cameron, the younger) cope with the hardscrabble life of a working class family in which the dad, an out of work plumber, is too proud to get welfare while the mom makes what she can by cleaning. Ruben and Cameron discover that although they have had to share one pair of boxing gloves between them, they can bring on some extra cash by taking part in an illegal boxing league. Ruben does well by winning while Cameron does almost as well from the tips he earns from losing with heart and panache. In the process, the boys learn just what the best of being a brother is all about. In the sequel, When Dogs Cry (2001, published in America as Getting the Girl in 2003), the boys have given up boxing, dad has found a job, and Cameron desperately needs to stop being such a loser. He thinks that getting a girl would help but finds something else far more important. According to Zusak, both of these novels lean heavily on his experiences with his older brother. Even if that is so, they may just be the best boy’s books since our own Mark Twain’s.

A Post-Modern Mystery

I Am the Messenger is the story of a classic underachieving, nineteen year old cabbie, Ed Kennedy, once again from the wrong side of the tracks. The book begins with a bank robbery in which Ed and his mates are trapped on the floor in the bank, being threatened by one of the robbers. Things get more dicey when a cop appears and starts writing a ticket for the getaway car, the driver being over-parked in a fifteen minute zone. Ed ends up foiling the robbery and making an accidental hero of himself. What follows is a crafty post-modern mystery in which Ed receives a series of playing cards with clues about people he is supposed to help. I’ll leave it there, lest I reveal too much. The idea for this book came to Zusak when he noticed that the parking limit outside a bank was only fifteen minutes which is hardly enough time to finish one’s legal business, let alone a robbery.

Remembering to Remember

Zusak’s most successful book to date is The Book Thief (2006). It’s the story of a ten your old girl, Liesel Meminger, who lives in a foster home in one of the suburbs of Munich during World War II. On the way to Munich, her younger brother dies, and while he is being buried, she finds a grave digger’s manual near the grave. Unable to read or write, she steals the book anyway and this begins a craving for books that will continue throughout the war. Eventually, her foster father teaches her how to read, a Jewish refugee, hiding in the basement, paints over the pages of Mein Kampf to give them fresh writing surfaces, and the two of them begin making up their own stories.

The Book Thief is based on stories Zusak’s parents told about growing up under the in Nazis. Although it is based on actual experiences, there is a lot of imaginative material in the book, enough I think that it could be considered a very speculative piece. I mean this in the most serious and appreciative sense, because the world that Zusak creates is meticulous and there is not a word that does not resonate with truth.

What makes these novels work?

The long and the short of Zusak’s talent has to do with his most stunning ear for voice. We know that language is character but in a Zusak novel it becomes transcendent. His characters do not merely speak, they sing. The quickest way to get into a narrative is to voice the narrative in the first person. This Zusak does but with a resonance that is absolutely astounding, giving his story-telling an almost relentless authenticity. In Fighting Ruben Wolfe we not only hear the story through Cameron’s voice, but every chapter ends with the brothers talking to each other at bedtime. This device shades the narration, seasoning the story with irony, comedy, and most of all, the flavor of their ever-deepening relationship. In the sequel, each chapter ends with poetry – a hint of where Cameron is going.

In The Book Thief, Zusak steps back to an omniscient point of view but with an astonishingly brilliant leap of imagination. Death itself narrates Liesel’s story so that one is reading through an already shaded narrative into strikingly realized characters whose language, once again, resonates with authenticity, so much so that the book has been favorably compared to The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

Zusak grew up speaking German and he probably heard many of the stories his parent’s told in German. Nevertheless, it would have been so easy to miss a tone here and there, to stumble into the cliché German of World War II movies. None of that here. We can only hope that the film – the rights have been purchased – hits the mark as well. Over and over again, on my first read through, I wondered if Zusak will ever write this well again. I hope so. But really, with a name like his, you’ve just got to be good.