Thursday 20 February 2014

Meeting Markus Zusak - The Book Thief

I normally wouldn't read something like The Book Thief, but Markus Zusak and I share the same literary agent and she mentioned him to me during a meeting. I wanted to be in the loop, so, like everyone else on the planet, I picked up a copy of his book.



As Markus himself says, "It's set in war time Germany, it's narrated by Death, almost everybody dies, and it's 580 pages - you'll love it."

At times I've felt like Death has been narrating MY life after losing my mom, dad, a close friend, three out of four grandparents, having had a miscarriage and losing my beloved dog.

But I loved the book and powered through it in a few days. I was thrilled to get the chance to meet Markus in person recently. Markus is a friend of a friend and I was invited to a special screening/booksigning.

The place was packed, so I didn't get as much quality time as I would have liked. I had to make every minute count. When I was "presented" to him my opening line was an enthusiastic, "I'm an author as well!"

I saw a look of terror ever-so-briefly cross his face. I'm sure he gets this all the time from writer groupies and hangers on. I'm sure he was waiting for me to pull out my manuscript and ask him if he could help me get published. I had to do damage control - stat.

"We have the same agent!" I said hopefully.

His face relaxed. I wasn't a nutter after all. We had a lovely conversation and he posed for a happy snap.

As someone who has written both a novel and adapted it as a screenplay, I thought it was interesting that he didn't write the film version of his book. To me that would be like having a surrogate carry your child. Sure, I'd do it as a last resort, but ideally I would want to carry my own baby so I could control everything.

But he's said writing the book had wrung him dry and that it was time for someone else to carry the torch and follow through with their vision.

Hopefully I'll get the chance to have another conversation with Markus. He's a true inspiration and made sure he signed every person's book at the event - over four hours of signing! I'm just hoping some of his bestselling author juju rubbed off on me...


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