Markus Zusak

An Australian writer who gave The Book Thief to Death as narrator, on the reasoning that a story set in wartime Germany needed someone with a great deal of work on.

Liesel steals books in a small town outside Munich while her foster family hides a Jewish man in the basement. Death is tired, oddly gentle, and gives away the ending repeatedly and early, which removes suspense and replaces it with dread. Zusak's parents were German and Austrian and the household stories are the source. The Messenger came before it and I Am the Messenger is the same book under a different title abroad.