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A fascinating and compelling story about the power of words, both written and spoken, "The Book Thief" is the story of a young orphan growing up in Nazi Germany and her three encounters with the narrator, Death.

Young Liesel is taken to live with foster parents after her mother is accused of having Communist leanings. On the journey to her new home, her brother passes away. This leads to Liesel's first opportunity to become the titular "Book Thief," when she steals a copy of "The Gravedigger's Handbook" from one of the men digging her brother's grave.

Over the course of the story, Liesel learns how to read and finds a passion for the printed word, going to extreme lengths to acquire new books to read with her foster father and, later, a Jewish refugee hiding out in the basement.

With the outside, sardonic narration of Death, we see the power of words not only on characters, but society as a whole. Setting the story in Nazi Germany at the height of Hitler's rule gives the story an even greater power as we see how definitions can help and hurt, the power of pursuasion in public speaking and literary texts and the power of words to build up or destroy. Liesel's family is defined by how they use words, especially her foster mother's use of foul language. Liesel's foster father is deemed a Jewish sympathizer and we see how that affects he and his family over the course of the story.

The choice to have Death as the narrator could easily have been the story's undoing. But Markus Zusak makes it work well, offering a compelling story that will have you marvelling at the words he uses and the way he puts them together. Zusak crafts sentences that will have you pondering them long after the last page is turned and marvelling in their deceptive simplicity. In a story where words and their power are central, it's fascinating to see the exact right word or phrase used again and again by Zusak.