The Book Thief becomes book of choice for Chicago

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, books, novels, The Book Thief continues to find new audiences and after passing two million US sales at the end of 2011, has now been adapted for the stage and chosen for the One Book, One Chicago literary event.

Author and Sydney-sider Markus Zusak was in Chicago last weekend for the premiere of The Book Thief play produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre for Young Adults.

Adapted by Heidi Stillman, The Book Thief play has received positive reviews including this: "The Book Thief is a beautiful story, well told by a cast of solid performers. The transformation from book to stage works quite well and the emotions that it is meant to stir up in us, come through."

While visiting Chicago, Zusak took part in a Q & A following the Sunday matinee performance before speaking at Teen Volume Conference and being interviewed at the Chicago Library Centre by columnist Dawn Turner Trice.

Alongside the play, The Book Thief has been chosen for Chicago's One Book, One Chicago which is an initiative by Chicago Public Library to get the whole city reading and talking about one book.

One Book, One Chicago was launched in 2001 as "an opportunity to engage and enlighten residents, foster a sense of community and create a culture of reading. By offering free public programming around each One Book, One Chicago selection and hosting dozens of book discussion groups in locations across the city, the Chicago Public Library aims to enrich the experience of reading for everyone."

It seems the popularity of The Book Thief continues to grow and all the while build expectations for Zusak's next book, Bridge of Clay, to be published in 2013.

Perhaps feeling the weight of these expectations, Zusak posted on his publisher's website:

"When all is said and done, I think I finally see that the book I'm writing is actually simple: It's about a boy. His name is Clay. He's building a bridge. And he wants that bridge to be something truly great and miraculous. Now I just have to finish writing it, and I'll do everything I can to make it right."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book review: The life to come by Michelle de Krester

Image
One of the characters I most enjoyed in Michelle de Krester's The life to come is Sydney's inner west. I arrived in Newtown on a yellowy January morning in the early 1980s and lived above King St near the start of Erskinville Rd for six months before a succession of terrace houses across Newtown, Emmore and Macdonaldtown. Coming from the country to study 'Communications' I could easily have been minor character fodder for the author, momentarily shuffling by in ill-fitting jeans alongside the ubiquitous Pippa and George (that is, they are the only characters appearing in all five sections of what is an artfully decentralised narrative). I might not have done too well descriptively from de Krester's pen. She finds a way to poke holes in all of her characters, perhaps with the exception of expat Christabel who is the most downtrodden of characters, but not by the author, who otherwise sustains a mildly scornful, disapproving or comedic tone. For example, Geo...
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Nowhere Child by Christian White

Image
Little Sammy Went is gone, and while The Nowhere Child tells us where fairly quickly - who, how, why and at what cost takes the rest of this fast-paced book to uncover. I use the cliche 'fast-paced' on purpose because like most genre books, except for the exceptional few, the 'fast-pace' does rely on cliches to a fair degree. Which is not to say The Nowhere Child is a poor novel. Rather it is a clever book, with more than enough periods of real tension and surprise to keep the reader turning pages (or flicking them as the case may be). Clever because it embeds just enough themes that are deemed praiseworthy and admirable in the subjective group-think world that is publishing. (That is not a criticism of the book or publishing, just a reality in these days of thought-fear.) Of course there is the obligatory references to reading and authors - we must worship at the the book altar of course. Being set in both Australia and the US may explain why at times Matth...
Read more + comment »

Book review: The Choke by Sophie Laguna

Image
The Choke tells the story of a young girl raised by her war-ravaged grandfather in a beat-up house near the fictional Victorian town of Nullabri on the banks of the Murray River. Nullabri may well be located across the water from fictional Bellington and Riversend from Chris Hammer's Scrubland as we find ourselves in another rendition of dystopian rural Australia where the river (or lack of) is a silent presence. Author Sophie Laguna has again given her child heroine Justine and the other young characters a warmth and vulnerability so easily observable in children and it is part of the growing tension of the book as to how this will be ripped apart by the mostly dysfunctional adults in their lives. Or by the eroding process of simply growing up in poverty and ignorance. There is something dangerously criminal about Justine's father who is mostly absent yet longed for by Justine and her step-brothers. The depiction of his return, his dismantling of his sons' fragile...
Read more + comment »