Popular Culture Review
50
•
Schindler's List (1982), the portrait of a cunning, street-smart
entrepreneur with a deep sense of what it means to be human in a world
of horror
• The Nazi Officer's Wife (1998), an autobiographical account of how
one young Austrian law graduate, even pressed into service as a
German judge after World War II, survived a marriage to a
temperamental, abusive German who later became a Nazi officer
• The Zookeeper's Wife (2007), a novel-like documentary that depicts
actions taken by a Polish zoo director and his wife, to save hundreds of
Jewish people from concentration camps
•
The Book Thief (2005), a powerful, cathartic novel, originally intended
for young readers in the United States, that conveys a profound view of
testing the limits in ordinary German society during WWII
•
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), an
epistolary novel of courage, love, and the literature that binds the
human soul
•
The Reader (1995), a stark minimalist novel (similar in tone to
Wiesel’s Night) that combines coming of age, deception, shame of self
and society, and inspirational hope
•
The Postmistress (2010), a novel spanning the United States and
England in 1940, before the United States entered war, focusing on the
lives of three resilient women and a letter never delivered
This article addresses the art of the reading of literature in three
contemporary popular novels—The Book Thief The Guernsey Literary and
Potato Peel Pie Society, and The Reader. Since their publications, each has sold
millions of copies and has been translated into a number of languages, further
increasing their integration into the popular culture of “what people read.”
Although setting, timeframe, style, tone, and voice are different in these works,
each book’s characters display a striking array of feelings, thoughts, and beliefs
about the Holocaust, ranging from the philosophical to the practical. The reading
of literature, as depicted in these three works, serves as a means to deal with
sacrifice, provide sanctuary, and generate redemption to transcend the horrors of
war. Each of these three accounts illustrate the broad appeal that defines popular
literature and portrays the Holocaust in terms to which readers can relate,
particularly with respect to the themes of sacrifice, sanctuary, and redemption—
universal themes that enter the consciousness of contemporary popular culture.
The Book Thief
Published in 2005, The Book Thief by Australian writer Markus Zusak
is a novel about the importance of stories and words in Nazi Germany. The
novel is suitable for all audiences, but it has been marketed in the United States
as a young-adult book. It has won numerous prizes, including the Michael L.
Printz Honor Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award. It has become
phenomenally popular because of its appeal to persons of all ages, the