Books like The Book Thief
What should you read after Markus Zusak’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Markus Zusak
- 2005
- Historical fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Book Thief
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
A childhood friendship wrecked by one act of cowardice, told by a narrator who has carried it for decades. The same mix of tenderness and historical violence.
- A friendship with a lemon-haired boy
- German civilians, not soldiers
- Words as the real subject
- Afghanistan, not Germany
Best for the German sideAll the Light We Cannot See
A blind French girl and a German boy who is good at radios, in tiny chapters that circle each other for years before they meet. Zusak's exact register.
- German civilians, not soldiers
- Words as the real subject
- A girl who steals books
- More ornate prose
Worth a look — with a warningThe Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
John Boyne
The other famous novel narrated by a German child who does not understand what his country is doing. Shorter, blunter, and it will flatten you.
- German civilians, not soldiers
- A friendship with a lemon-haired boy
- Death as the narrator
- Historically implausible premise
Best for books as rescueThe Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer
Occupied islanders invent a book club to explain themselves to a German patrol and then find they meant it. Reading as survival, handled with warmth.
- A girl who steals books
- Words as the real subject
- German civilians, not soldiers
- Told in letters throughout
Great matchSarah's Key
Tatiana de Rosnay
A girl locks her little brother in a cupboard to keep him safe on the night of the round-up, and the consequence of that runs forward sixty years.
- A Jewish man hidden in a basement
- German civilians, not soldiers
- Spoilers given in advance
- The modern half is weaker
Great matchThe Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
A motherless girl taken in by people who owe her nothing, in a country busy being cruel elsewhere. The foster-family warmth Zusak does better than anyone.
- An accordion-playing foster father
- Words as the real subject
- A girl who steals books
- 1960s South Carolina
Best for the love of booksThe Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A boy adopts a book from a hidden library and discovers someone is burning every copy. Post-war Barcelona, and the same faith that words are worth risking things for.
- Words as the real subject
- A girl who steals books
- German civilians, not soldiers
- Frankly melodramatic plotting
Great matchThe Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
A bookish narrator, a house full of secrets, and a storyteller who keeps announcing what is coming next. If Zusak's narration hooked you, this shares the trick.
- Words as the real subject
- Spoilers given in advance
- Death as the narrator
- No historical setting
Best for the voiceThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
Another novel that lives or dies on an unusual narrator's way of describing ordinary things, and manages it without a drop of sentimentality.
- Death as the narrator
- Words as the real subject
- Spoilers given in advance
- Set in contemporary England
Great matchThe Nightingale
Kristin Hannah
Two sisters in occupied France, one hiding people and one smuggling them out, in a novel that goes for your tear ducts as deliberately as Zusak does.
- A Jewish man hidden in a basement
- German civilians, not soldiers
- An accordion-playing foster father
- Broader, more commercial prose
Great matchThe Giver
Lois Lowry
A state that has legislated memory away, and a boy who inherits it anyway. The argument about who controls language, written for younger readers.
- Words as the real subject
- A girl who steals books
- German civilians, not soldiers
- A science-fictional setting
Great matchThe Help
Kathryn Stockett
Ordinary people inside a system organised around cruelty, deciding in small ways not to cooperate. Told in voices, like Zusak, and just as easy to read.
- German civilians, not soldiers
- An accordion-playing foster father
- Words as the real subject
- Set in 1960s Mississippi
Worth a look — with a warningThe Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
Here because readers who loved Zusak's fable-like narration often want more of it. Coelho is all fable and no history, which is precisely the risk.
- Death as the narrator
- Words as the real subject
- Spoilers given in advance
- No historical grounding
What should you read after The Book Thief?
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini — a childhood friendship wrecked by one act of cowardice, told by a narrator who has carried it for decades. The same mix of tenderness and historical violence.
If what stayed with you was german civilians, not soldiers, read All the Light We Cannot See by instead: a blind French girl and a German boy who is good at radios, in tiny chapters that circle each other for years before they meet. Zusak's exact register. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is the other strong option — the other famous novel narrated by a German child who does not understand what his country is doing. Shorter, blunter, and it will flatten you.
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