An Interview with Markus Zusak
Markus Zusak: Oh, the old pitch. It’s like when you finish a book, and people say, oh, what’s it about? Every author or every writer just freezes in that moment and says, oh, my God. And in this case, I’ve had 20 years to think about it. I still often go with the idea that I would when I was writing this book, and it kept getting bigger and bigger. I just thought no one is going to read this book. It’s going to be my least successful book. So here’s the first pitch, I suppose, more other people pitching it to their friends if they’ve read it and if, by chance, they liked it. They’d say, “You’ve got to read this book, The Book Thief.” And the friend would say, “Well, what’s it about?” Then what do you do? You’ve got to say, “Well, it’s set in Nazi Germany. It’s narrated by Death. Nearly everybody dies. Oh, and it’s 560 pages long. You’ll love it.” Every now and again, I think of that as …
