Each book changes you in some way and you hope to grow with each one. I didn’t have children when I wrote my first five books, and with Bridge of Clay, the book took much longer than I originally thought. You said in an interview that after each book, you have changed as a person. In the end, I think there’s a part of you in everything even though you haven’t lived even a moment of it. But it’s also the memory of the stories I heard from my parents as I was growing up, which played a part. In The Book Thief, it’s nothing and everything, because of course, I didn’t live in Germany at that time. How much of yourself do you place into your stories? They later discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance and one of the boys, Clay, will build a bridge for a miracle.

The story is about five brothers, the Dunbar boys, who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. We just have to write them and hope for the best. We can’t really know what strikes a chord with the readers, and that’s the beauty and mystery of books. What, according to you, made The Book Thief such a success?ĭeath narrating was a factor, and also the characters themselves. When I wrote The Book Thief, the test was that I thought no one would read it, and I had to ask myself, ‘Will you still write it?’ In the case of Bridge of Clay, I knew many people would read it, and I had to ask myself again, ‘If I could write it, exactly how it needed to be written?’ It was always my most ambitious book. I believe you’re always being tested as a writer.

Bridge of clay author