The Book Thief
Novel by Markus ZusakWikipedia
114
MENTIONS
13
EPISODES
12
PODCASTS
Search complete. 114 mentions across 13 episodes found for "The Book Thief".
Oct 11, 2026
Kelly ShanahanGUEST
You know, Give Me Almost Anything by Jodi Picoult.
Kelly ShanahanGUEST
The Book Thief.
Kelly ShanahanGUEST
That is a book that my daughter and I just love.
Kelly ShanahanGUEST
And all the things that I read to my daughter.
Christiane BrewGUEST
You introduced me.
Christiane BrewGUEST
I chose a book and it was The Book Thief.
Christiane BrewGUEST
And that book, The Book Thief, took me through my hospital stay and after.
Christiane BrewGUEST
So it's my recovery book.
Christiane BrewGUEST
And I was able to give it the attention it needed.
Nigel ClarkeGUEST
And this was like an opportunity for us to do like, and I'm not saying, when I say audio books, we weren't doing like little audio books.
Nigel ClarkeGUEST
We were doing 1984 and The Book Thief and The Kite Runner and just like, like real, real serious books.
Nigel ClarkeGUEST
And it became a really, really good time for us where we would like share something and we still do it now.
Nigel ClarkeGUEST
We still listen to it now.
Cindy BurnettHOST
So first, I have a question for you.
Cindy BurnettHOST
Did you ever read the book Thief? Yes, but it was years ago.
Cindy BurnettHOST
Because it's also narrated by death.
Cindy BurnettHOST
And both of these books are favorites of mine.
Kelly HookerGUEST
Interesting.
Kelly HookerGUEST
Yes.
Kelly HookerGUEST
I remember The Book Thief being one of the first books that I had read from that death narrator.
Cindy BurnettHOST
Very interesting.
speaker_6HOST
Totally.
speaker_6HOST
And the book we are talking about today is Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.
speaker_7HOST
Such an absolute cultural juggernaut.
speaker_6HOST
I mean, it was published in Australia back in 2005, hit the US in 2006, and over the last 20 years, we are talking about over 17 million copies sold.
speaker_6HOST
Yeah, a mark of belonging.
speaker_6HOST
It's something you have to wrestle with and respect.
speaker_7HOST
It essentially bakes a reverence for language right into his DNA, and that background tells us exactly what The Book Thief is and, more importantly, what it is not.
speaker_6HOST
Right.
speaker_3HOST
Exactly.
speaker_3HOST
Published on March 9th, 2026, she sat down with the author, Markus Zusak, to reflect on the 20th anniversary of his masterpiece, The Book Thief.
speaker_2HOST
And it is a really remarkable milestone to examine because, I mean, this isn't just a retrospective on a single successful title.
speaker_3HOST
No, it's way bigger than that.
speaker_2HOST
Right.
speaker_2HOST
It belongs to the collective consciousness of the readership.
speaker_2HOST
Zusak is no longer the sole authority on The Book Thief.
speaker_3HOST
He's just the guy tethered to it while it marches forward through time.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
I was in England, I was in rehearsal, and I was watching a prop book get set on fire by an actor playing a Nazi.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
And this notification came up in my email saying that one of my books had been banned.
Jodi PicoultGUEST
And I was like, that's a little on the nose.
Luke BatemanHOST
G'day, I'm Luke Bateman, and this is In The Good Books.
Luke BatemanHOST
Jesus, 29, Jodie, that's incredible.
Luke BatemanHOST
Selling over 40 million copies, which is also astonishing.
Luke BatemanHOST
Her latest book, Hollow Bones, released on September the 15th, and it is available for you now.
Luke BatemanHOST
But we're about to have an amazing conversation with Jodie.
Kate HergottHOST
Oh, there's a part of it.
Kate HergottHOST
It's not the same, but Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief.
Kate HergottHOST
It was kind of reminding me of that.
Kate HergottHOST
The Book Thief is more of an example of like, the how some german families really were just like i don't know i don't think it'll get too bad so it's not necessarily the story of the people who were like as violently affected by it they were eventually um but to your point where it's like kind of even germans who necessarily wouldn't have considered themselves nazis either were also just like living their lives in little communities and then like all of a sudden these things were starting to happen so the book this one did kind of remind me of the way that that book approaches it where it's like Especially that far back in time, like it's not like everyone had the same kind of information.
Kate HergottHOST
And without spoiling that book I mean it's been out for like 20 plus years, it does end up hurting everyone that information was kept from them overall but All that to say, I do think it's like very effective kind of going back to that quote about nonfiction versus fiction where like you're, you're feeling the lives of people who are alive while that happened instead of the like clinical explanation of what happened in that time period.
Deena HelmGUEST
Yeah.
Raven KennedyGUEST
And it's not like his most well-known book.
Raven KennedyGUEST
His best-known book is The Book Thief, which is like movie and all that thing.
Raven KennedyGUEST
But he is just one of my all-time favorite writers.
Raven KennedyGUEST
He has such a beautiful way of Of having characters who are so normal.
Jim ThayerHOST
Markus Zusak is an Australian-German writer.
Jim ThayerHOST
He's best known for The Book Thief and The Messenger.
Jim ThayerHOST
The Guardian newspaper interviewed him.
Jim ThayerHOST
and asked, what made you want to write when you were starting out? And Mark Azuzak replied, I wanted to be a writer when I was 16 and read the right books for me.
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