The Book Thief

Zusak made the riskiest decision possible — having Death narrate the story — and it worked. The book-stealing girl in Nazi Munich is a character who balances innocence and toughness with rare precision. The prose has an unusual musicality for historical fiction, somewhere between poetic and raw. It can feel slightly contrived at the most calculated emotional moments, but the emotion arrives all the same. One of the most original novels about the Second World War of the last twenty years.