I am generally not ok with Holocaust literature. I find that – no matter if it is a work of fiction or non-fiction – it has a general bad habit of falling into the pit of self-pity and tokenism; not so for The Book Thief. It is a book that launches into a different way of reading about the horrific event of the Holocaust, both in the sense of story and style. There is not even a smidgen of Life is Beautiful (which, to clarify, I hated simply because of said glossy Hollywood-produced navel-gazing sentiments) nor is there the bad grammar of The Diary of Anne Frank. Quite simply, The Book Thief is not only a great read but is also one that is multifaceted in the way that Holocaust storytelling has not been before.
As to be expected with all Holocaust stories, the tale starts with Death. Unlike other Holocaust stories, Death is more than just an end result of suffering; he (I am presumptuous here) is both character and storyteller. He tells us the tale of blonde German Leisel with “dangerous brown eyes”. He talks of the German Jews who live in her poverty stricken street. The ones who have been harassed, abused and eventually removed in the dead of night.
There is also the Mayor’s wife who lives in the mansion on top of the hill, Leisel’s best friend Rudy, the little Jesse Owens with the shock of lemon coloured hair and her foster parents who hides the Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, simply because of a past promise.
The Book Thief is (for want of a better phrase) an intricate web of personal histories in a time when war has ripped apart everyone’s lives, no matter which side they were on. And more importantly, it shows that, while World War 2 was a violent, horrific and terrible time in history, life was more important and it still continued. No matter how many air raids peppered the city, nor the number of Jews who filed through the street.
The best thing of all is that these stories are told through the unhuman and indiscriminate eyes of death. As they always say, death doesn’t discriminate. In the words of the man himself: “You are going to die.”
Tags: bombs, Books, death, dying, german, holocaust, Jews, survivor, the book thief, world war 2, Zusak
