“They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can't hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later.”

Australian-German writer

Markus Zusak is an Australian-German writer best known for the novels The Book Thief and The Messenger. His work has reached a wide international readership, and he won the Margaret Edwards Award in 2014. He is known above all for those two novels, which became international bestsellers. His writing is associated with fiction that has travelled well beyond his home audience.