Markus Zusak

Dogs have long been a feature of Markus Zusak’s fiction. His pre-fame trilogy of Young Adult novels, centring on brothers Cameron and Ruben Wolfe and their family, deployed the animal as a metaphor for tenaciousness. In the trilogy’s final book, When Dogs Cry (2001), Cameron and Ruben all but adopt Miffy, a Pomeranian whose scrappiness matches that of the brothers and whose death provides the book’s emotional fulcrum. There is a caffeinated hound in The Messenger (2002) and a clothesline-obsessed border collie in Bridge of Clay (2018). Even when, as in Zusak’s best-known work, The Book Thief (2006), dogs are not present, something about the way the author sees them – lovably rambunctious, all rough edges, chaos and, yes, doggedness – permeates the spirit of his two-legged characters.

Most writers seek to better their previous books, but in Markus Zusak’s case this goal was particularly difficult, given that his last book was The Book Thief. Published in 2005, it has sold sixteen million copies worldwide and spent ten years on the New York Times bestseller list ...

The Book Thief marks a departure for Markus Zusak. It is his first novel for adults, has broader concerns than his earlier work, and makes clearer his ambitions to be considered a serious writer. His first three novels, for young adults, were primarily focused on the masculinity of the boys in a working-class Sydney family ...

Jamal and his friends, in Boy Overboard, are soccer-mad but playing around the bomb craters is risky, not only because of landmines but because the government doesn’t approve of soccer – the government of Afghanistan, that is. Jamal and his family flee their homeland and take incredible risks in their attempt to get to Australia. Much of the story is familiar: illegal schools, the killing of women at a soccer ground, exploitative people smugglers and the Australian government’s ‘Pacific Solution’. ‘“There was an election in Australia,” he says. “The Australian government thought they’d get more votes by keeping you out.” His voice goes even quieter and sadder than before. “And they did.”’