Just like big moments, big books have a before and after. When The Book Thief became the phenomenon it did – 16m copies sold, global book tour, Hollywood film – it seemed no one knew what to make of its author, Markus Zusak: a smiley, self-effacing thirtysomething from Engadine who wrote novels mainly read by Australian teenagers and who had now produced a huge bestseller in the form of a 500-page novel set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death.
When his next book did not seem forthcoming – Bridge of Clay would take 13 years to be published – hungry readers turned instead to Zusak’s previous book The Messenger, an adaptation of which is about to begin on the ABC.
