Markus Zusak

Australian · b. 1975

Markus Zusak grew up in Sydney on his German mother's kitchen-table stories of bombed cities and small, punished acts of decency — scenes he transposed nearly verbatim into The Book Thief, his Death-narrated novel of Nazi Germany. Published in 2005, it spent over 500 weeks on the New York Times list and became modern YA's crossover masterpiece.