Suzanne Leal

in the work.

I think there's a touch of...

enormous fame come very quickly with The Book Thief and enormous expectations and I interviewed Marcus a couple of months ago and the impression I had from that is that he really felt that he couldn't just produce another book.

He had to produce the book.

It had to be better or bigger than The Book Thief and The Book Thief had been so extraordinarily successful and

that I think the pressure was great.

It would be hard to feel that you had to trump that book.

When I was preparing for this interview with Marcus Suzak, I re-read by way of audiobook The Book Thief while I was running, just while I was doing stuff.

And it translates very well to audiobook The Book Thief because it's such a sprawling world of rhythm.

And what he does in his writing is he uses a very strong metre.

So the metre propels you on.

And I suspect this will be a very good audiobook.

Yes.

That's interesting.

And I'm wondering whether that's partly for an international audience and whether it's also partly returns to Marcus's roots as a young adult author.

So he wrote the book called The Messenger, or I Am The Messenger, I think it's in the US.

And that has a similar, Ed Kennedy is not dissimilar to Matthew Dunbar as a

narrator.

And I'm wondering whether your issue that the mythology is slightly overworked comes from the history of a man who writes for young adults, where more is signposted.

So this is really a book that is an adult book, but it's about adolescent boys.