Marcus Zusak was born in Sydney, Australia to an Austrian father and a German mother, both of whom experienced World War II firsthand in their native countries. Zusak has stated that The Book Thief was unlike anything he had written before and largely inspired by stories his parents told him as a child about wartime Munich and Vienna. Zusak has specifically singled out two stories his mother told him, one of the bombing of Munich, and one of Jews being marched through Zusak's mother's town on their way to the Dachau concentration camp.
Like The Book Thief's character of Hans Hubermann, Zusak's father was a house painter, and at an early age Zusak wanted to be a house painter as well....
