The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
 
First UK Bodley Head edition, first impression: London: The Bodley Head, 2007. Signed by the author on the title page.
 
Original black cloth spine lettered in gilt with the Bodley Head device at the foot, grey cloth boards; illustrations by Trudy White. With the original pictorial dust jacket, photography by Jeff Cottenden and design by Gavin Morris, unclipped and priced £12.99.
 
A near fine copy, signed by the author on the title page in black ink, the signature incorporating a small drawn face; the binding square and firm with bright gilt; some toning to the edges, with faint spotting to the bottom edge and fore-edge of the text block.
 
The dust jacket near fine and unclipped, with a little spotting to the verso of the spine panel, and retaining the purple "Signed Copy" sticker applied by Borders to the upper panel. Cottenden's photograph — a girl lying full length on a floorboarded room with an open book raised above her, the scene framed by heavy drawn curtains — is fresh in colour, the folds sharp.
 
Zusak's fifth novel, narrated by Death and set in a small German town during the Second World War, was first published in Australia by Picador in 2005 and in the United States by Knopf the following year. It was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book in 2007, having taken the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, South East Asia and South Pacific, the year before; by 2018 its publisher recorded more than five hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Brian Percival's film followed in 2013, for which John Williams was nominated for Best Original Score at the eighty-sixth Academy Awards. Random House issued the novel in Britain in 2007 across two imprints — Doubleday for the adult market and The Bodley Head, of Random House Children's Books — this being the Bodley Head issue, with Trudy White's illustrations and Cottenden's photographic jacket.