Top 30 Modern Classics -  I

I have attempted to put together the best modern classic books of 20th and 21st century. The selection is entirely as per my personal opinion ans is not ordered by any rating.

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

The story is set in Nazi Germany in 1939-1943. Death is a character in the book who tells the story of Liesel. 

Liesel is an orphan. She never knew her father. Her mother disappears after delivering her to her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa, who prove to very kind souls. Her younger brother died on the train to Molching where the foster parents live. Liesel steals her first book,The Gravedigger's Handbook, left lying in the snow by her brother's grave.

Liesel becomes best friends with her neighbour Rudy. 

One night a Jew turns up in their home. He's the son of a friend of Hans from the first world war, the man who taught him the accordian, whose widowed wife Hans promised to help if she ever needed it. Hans is a German who does not hate Jews, though he knows the risk he and his family are taking, letting Max live in the basement. Max and Liesel become close friends, and he writes an absolutely beautiful story for her. It's the story of Max, growing up and coming to Liesel's home, and it's painted over white-painted pages of Mein Kampf.

The story unwinds itself lyrically. One feels sad for the persecuted Jews as well as the suffering of the ordinary Germans.

Death is rendered vividly, a lonely, haunted being who is drawn to children, who has had a lot of time to contemplate human nature and wonder at it. Liesel is very real, a child living a child's life of soccer in the street, stolen pleasures, sudden passions and a full heart while around her bombs drop, maimed veterans hang themselves, bereaved parents move like ghosts, Gestapo take children away and the dirty skeletons of Jews are paraded through the town.

The book has the innate ability to make the reader one with the characters. Be it Rudy who is always begging Liesel for a kiss, be it Liesel in her innocence, be it Max or be it Hans. the characters are lively and down to earth.

Markus Zukas has created a treasure. The book is long - 552 pages. the reader will not be burdened with the vastness of the book, specially after Max steps in the book. 

The book was published in 2005 and already been translated into 30 languages. Markus Zukas is an Australian author.

A classic to be treasured.

Namaste

Prabir