The Book Thief Author’s New Novel Grapples With Masculinity and Brotherhood

Growing up in Australia, Markus Zusak would ask his mother and father--post--World War II immigrants hailing from Germany and Austria, respectively--to tell him the same stories about their lives over and over. Zusak's own stories have been in print since his first novel, The Underdog, was published in 1999. But it was his 2005 global YA hit, The Book Thief, inspired by threads of those family tales, that made him a literary sensation.