Olejar Books

Our heroine is a 9 year old girl called Leisel Meminger. Leisel is sent to a foster family after her brother dies and her mother has, ominously, been "sent away". Her life is changed forever when, by her brother's grave, she picks up a book hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger–™s Handbook, and taking it is her first act of book theft. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor–™s wife–™s library, wherever there are books to be taken. As Markus says, the narrator of the book is Death which, as soon as you think about it, seems oddly fitting for a book about Nazi Germany. There is a quietly radical element to the book, too, which shows how difficult life was for ordinary Germans during this period. A moving, intelligent page-turner.