ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you believe youre still giving interviews aboutThe Book Thief10 years later?
MARKUS ZUSAK:It is sort of surreal.
Ive been lucky that a lot of people have read this book more than I ever dreamed would.
Credit: Michael Lionstar
I didnt think of the audience at all.
I want to know more about that!
What do you think you wouldnt have tried if you were writing for an audience?
I definitely wouldnt have made the book as big as it was.
I dont know whether I would have used Death as the narrator.
Every time there was a new idea, I would just say, Yes.
How have your feelings about the book changed over the past decade?
I didnt realize at the time how much the book meant to me.
and she says, Of course I did.
I was reading that, and I just started crying.
I was so embarrassed to do that while reading in public.
I was really alive when I was writing this.
When did you first realize the book wasnt flopping like you thought it was going to?
He had read the book, you could tell because he quoted from it.
I remember him saying that the book made him cry and all this stuff.
I could see my publisher and my editor jumping up and down over in the corner.
I think even then, I didnt know.
And they said, No, thats how many people arebuyingthe book, right now.
That was the moment where I thought, Oh god, okay.
This is actually happening.
Then a week or so later, thats when it was in theNew York Times.
Suddenly publishers around the world were saying, We want to publish that book, too.
So it all sort of snowballed from there.
Its actually not as interesting or tactical as at may sound.
Things just happen the way they happen.
When someone says, Oh, I love that book!
they dont say, Oh I love that young adult book!
or I love that book for adults!
or I love that science fiction book!
they just say I love that book.
A loved book transcends the category that its in anyway.
Do you have any favorite reader encounters from the past decade?
They were really going to steal it.
Id sign it and give it back to them and go, Alright.
I love that they whispered it to you, too.
Its conspiratorial, but its really honest at the same time, which is kind of beautiful.
What did you feel you could contribute to the canon of Holocaust literature especially as late as 2006?
The thing that freed me was the idea that I didnt think anyone would care.
Sometimes you get the cynical person saying, Do we really need another book set in Nazi Germany?
But I think you just have to ask, Is this a story worth telling?
And would those characters still be good characters?
I was just trying to write a book that would really mean something to me.
