Markus Zusak is best known for his explosively popular historical fiction The Book Thief, which has sold over 17 million copies worldwide, and been translated into dozens of languages. He has also authored The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, When Dogs Cry, The Messenger, and the vast and weighty novel Bridge of Clay (which Zusak confided in me is “not for a book for weaklings”). He is the abashed but deserving receiver of the Ethel Turner Prize in 2003, the National Jewish Book Award and the Kathleen Mitchell award in 2006, and the Ena Noël Award for Encouragement in 2008, and a finalist for many others.  

Most recently, Zusak has published a memoir, Three Wild Dogs and the Truth, which we discussed in-depth. I was curious about the philosophy of writing “the truth”, how Zusak connected personally with his books, and most importantly, how he perceives the act of writing in and of itself. Thankfully, he seemed keen to share. 

Markus Zusak, thank you for being here. 

Thanks for having me.  

Your latest book, a memoir, is titled Three Wild Dogs and the Truth. Did it take a great amount of courage to publish and publicize the truth?  

Not really. I just feel like it's my job to write the truth even when I'm not writing the truth. There's a pretty famous film writing guru, Robert McKee. I had a book signed by him and he just wrote “Dear Markus, write the truth.” And he's talking about writing made-up films, so even when you're writing fiction, you're trying to get to a certain truth. You're telling the truth by making things up. But that's a truth about us and about humans, so I wasn't too worried about it. I'm generally quite an open person and I think it's important to write about things we're not good at or what we've failed at. I'm really interested in that.

Even at home I'll say things like “if that dog mucks up one more time, we're sending him back to the group home.” And you sort of go “oh, that's politically incorrect,” but I think I was actually excited about not having a veneer. Especially in the era of social media, we've become really good at showing the so-called “perfect” parts of our lives: here's this great dinner we had— photographed. Here are good times with friends— photographed. And I'm like “no, no, that's not how we live.” We live in a way where we invite challenge and chaos into our lives, whether it's having children, or you taking on the chance to interview me. So I was happy to write about everything that's happened with us and the dogs we've brought into our lives. You're bringing wild animals into your house that have been domesticated over the centuries— things are going to happen. And those things expose both the beautiful parts of your life, and the things you would rather people not see. 

To me, it was like being 16 years old again, trying to write my first book. And I loved it. There was a lot of joy writing this book because we've got one dog now, and we've lost two dogs in the past, and it was just kind of nice to feel close to them again— not that they ever went away, but I love that idea that when we write, when we read, we disappear into a world and believe it. And so for me, it was great believing that I was there with them again. 

You drew from your own life to write a memoir. How did you take time off as a writer who was living in their own story? Was it difficult to stop thinking and symbolizing and narrating?  

It was actually a relief. I think I just enjoyed the idea that I didn't have to make anything up. I actually had to cull back and leave stuff out, which you also do in a novel, and I suppose I approached it not so differently to how I write a novel: I still listed my chapter headings, and I still put things in a structure that I was comfortable in.

Was there ever a sense in which you would write great truths and beautiful lines in your book and then go and buy the groceries and live your normal life? Was there ever a disparity between what you'd made out to be the “beautiful parts” and what your life looked like day to day?  

Mundane life! No one's ever asked me that before. I guess you feel as if you're going from the so-called sublime to the mundane, not even the ridiculous, just the boring. A couple of things I'll say about that: 

One is, when I'm at my best, I feel like I live in two worlds. I live in this world that we're in, and I live in the world that I'm writing, and I'm happiest when I'm really near that written world. It gets to a point where I'm waking up in the morning, and I feel like I could roll out of bed and land there. I feel close to it, rather than that world feeling like it's, I don't know, lost up in the mountains somewhere, and you've got to travel there to find it and then beat the door down to enter again. 

But at the same time, one of my favourite, happiest nights in my life, was when my mother-in-law had this job where she had to come home and put invoices into envelopes. And all you had to do was fold the invoice to get the address into the little window in the envelope. And it was a sort of mundane, menial task, but I also love menial tasks, because it’s like “alright, that's the job.” I don't have to worry about things like “oh, but that’s a plot point, that doesn't work.” So it doesn't have those intricacies of writing a novel or something. So I kind of appreciate those sort of tasks as well. 

And so I think it's good to waver between the two. If you live in one place – the menial – all the time, it will kill you. If you live in the other, that'll do the same because you'll never appreciate the simple things in life. So I think it's good to live between those two worlds. And I think we all do it, whether we're writers or not. We do all have our daydreams that are a big part of our lives. 

How do you feel about your story existing separately from you? Was there ever a fear that it would be misunderstood or interpreted in ways that you disagree with?  

So do you mean as a published book, or do you mean all books or a specific book? 

I mean, I assume it would be more of a fear with the memoir, just given that it's your own life.

Yeah, no, I think that every book is you, in a way, because you produced it, and it's the idea that writing a book and having it be published and sent out into the world was everything I wanted to do in the first place. And so I came to terms with that idea when I started writing because it was my goal is to be published, whether anyone read it or not, and I wanted people to read it, but I was also scared of people reading it. It's a little bit like choosing what you wear in the morning; you go out into the world and people will see you a certain way. I mean, people don't really care, but you imagine yourself through the eyes of other people.

So I think to me, it's sometimes scary when you think of someone reading your book. And that's why, when you read your own writing, every full stop feels like a giant rock in your throat. Whereas when you read somebody else's book, everything just flows perfectly because you're not paying attention to every word: you're paying attention to a page or a chapter or a moment. I think it's natural, and the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with the idea of that discomfort. It’s like when a book gets published and there's a mistake in it. Like a double word, like two “The’s,” you know? And you just pull your hair out and you're so devastated, but no one else even notices.   

So yeah, I think it's just one of those things that you do. It's a little bit like that idea of writing this imaginary, hopefully beautiful writing and then going to the supermarket. I think you're living between these two ideas - you writing the material and somebody else reading it - and you can't control that. So you let go of it and let people decide. 

You wrote that “There are so many books inside us, it seems, but they mostly remain unread. They're dormant, untold mountains, volcanoes without a top.” How did you balance your sudden “textual eruptions” with the more formal scheduled world of publishing and releasing a book? 

Yeah, I don't really fit into any publishing format, not anymore. My first four books came out within a year of each other. So from 1999, which sounds like forever ago to you, 2000, 2001, 2002, and then it was a three-year gap to The Book Thief in 2005 and then a 13-year gap to Bridge of Clay. 

And I think the difference for me is that I just wrote this one book, The Book Thief, that just turned out to be a bit out of the ordinary. And then 13 years to write the next book. Bridge of Clay was always going to be my hardest book and it was probably always going to take me 13 years. I'd already written that book before I was even published. But I went, oh, that's not it. 

So I think the real answer to that question is what I spent my life doing, and it comes back to the idea of the volcanoes without a top, is I write something, and I go “that's not it.” And then I try again and maybe use one of the things I liked about the first attempt and go “that's not quite it either.” Again and again, “that's not it. That's not it.” And then something happens: “that's it.” And so, and you can't really schedule those things. 

And so I'm not a book a year writer or a book every two years writer even. And I'm not whimsical either. Like I don't just only write when the muse takes me. I'm not going to say that that's rubbish as an idea - some writers do write like that - but I'm personally always working away and I'm very routine driven. I’m always trying to get into my routine so I can write, and then, when I feel like I'm sort of getting somewhere, then I can really write quickly.  

But as for a schedule, definitely not anymore. I just want it to feel right. I can't keep writing a book unless I believe, and I can't write the second 50 pages unless I believe in the first 50 pages. So all I'm trying to do is feel like I'm there, inside what I'm writing, and that I'm in the world that I'm writing. 

It's obviously really exciting to see you release nonfiction for the first time, but I assume there are fragments of nonfiction in every fiction book. Were there any parts of yourself or your life that you implanted into your other books like Bridge of Clay or The Book Thief or even that you discovered for yourself? 

Well definitely. In a way you could look at Clay in Bridge of Clay as me trying to write that book. It was like carrying the whole world on your shoulders. But definitely, Clay's a good example. I mean to be clear, at least two devastating things happen to Clay in that book which have not happened to me. So you can sort of cut those things out, but a book is a metaphor for our lives in a way, and he's an exaggerated version of me, I suppose.

But the one thing that's really true about Clay is his idea of training and routines, you've even got that chapter heading, “warming up the Clay way.” So for me, I'm always trying to figure it out like “okay, what's the training? How much are you doing?” 

And it's often little things in books that are true. You could even say like The Book Thief, which is set in Nazi Germany, is autobiographical to an extent in the sense that, the book is so much about my own childhood, hearing my mum and dad tell me these stories about growing up in Germany and Austria. And so you're always taking something real and going “I could use that. I could use that” And even recently someone told me something, of course I can't remember what it is now, but I heard it and thought “I could use that in a book” as well. And so there are little things, but I think there are also these long-held truths of your life that also are embedded in your books. 

Just moving further into that, you mentioned in your TED Talk, “The Failurist,” of throwing the discus and hitting the steel net and not knowing how to approach that, and then training in the rain. Is Clay sort of a projection of that younger Markus who wanted to succeed?  

I think so. And I think as the most direct mirror of Clay to me is that he's trying to make this great, beautiful, perfect thing in building the bridge, to sort of transcend the tragedies of his life, but also to transcend humanness; to be better than human, just for a moment. 

And when I was writing that, I was writing for the World Championship of myself. I was trying to write a great book. But the only thing that makes any of those things great is not what you make. It's the idea that you know that you can't do it, but you try anyway. And that's what's actually great. And so in a way it's a poetic outcome that Bridge of Clay didn't have that sort of wide, massive appeal of The Book Thief. It's kind of perfect— you attempt this great thing, but you're never going to get what you feel like you're owed. Not that I felt like I was owed anything, but you hope that people will come to it.  

That's why I always say my readers and the world owe me nothing. I'm just lucky I get to do what I love for a living. 

Was this most recent memoir a shift in your creative direction for the future, or more of a break from your other more substantial projects? Did you discover anything writing this book that you might explore more in depth later on? 

I think I definitely saw that there were plenty of other books like this that I could write if I wanted to, but I have to really want to write something to write it. Even as an example, my mom and dad are 92 and 88, and they're totally crazy, of course. But on my mom's 80th birthday, I just made a list of these 80 things about her that we all think are funny or that we love or whatever. And then for my dad's 90th, I did the same. And it was really fascinating because my mom's 80 things were all really good things. But the 90 things for my dad were like “Yeah well, number two was when you smashed my alarm clock on Christmas Eve because it was going off and you didn't know how to switch it off. What kind of grown man, doesn't know how to turn off an alarm clock?” So my dad's got this massive temper, but he's also done these great things. And so I thought I could write a 500-page memoir about growing up with my dad. 

And then the thing with the discus, it was my dad who just always threw the discus back to me. But then three weeks later, he’s smashing my alarm clock in a fit of rage. So there's definitely a book in that. I remember my dad got run over outside our house one morning when I was about 10 or 11. And he survived, of course. He just had a massive bruise and everything. And so I was imagining that, if I had a really long title for that book, it would go something like “The Day my Dad got Run Over Outside our House and Survived.” I mean I probably wouldn't call it that, but it could also just be called “The Mad Austrian”, because that's where my dad's from. So yeah, I think it unlocked a little bit of that. 

But also, I mean, my heart's really in writing novels. I think those are my so-called volcanoes to climb.  

Your work is almost cinematic in the way it deals with action. Your most recent book starts with a punch-up with your dog, and you also have epic fights between the five brothers in Bridge of Clay. But underneath it all, there's such a sense of tenderness and intimacy. Where do you see love connect with fighting?

Yeah, wow. I think it's interesting, the idea of violence and the role that plays in my books. There's this idea of, is all violence bad violence? Like in the case of having a punch-up with my dog, I just had this dog that was attacking all of us. And it felt like “This could go on forever. Someone has to stop him. How am I going to stop him?” I'm happy for people to judge me and say, “oh, that's totally the wrong thing to do,” but it worked, and with this dog, actually someone had to fight back and speak to him on his level. 

And with the brothers, I think it's foolish to think that five brothers are going to live together and there aren't going to be any fights. But the idea is that there is a difference between five brothers having fights at home and abuse. Society draws those sorts of lines now, but some people want to have that line to say, “oh, there should be no violence whatsoever.” As if to say that we shouldn't even have these really raw emotions or be hurt, you know? And so my idea is to not shy away from those things, but to take the responsibility seriously. 

There’s this perfect example, which is my favourite moment in Bridge of Clay, at the very end when Clay comes home and he calls out Matthew's name. And like so many things in that book, it's a circle around to a previous moment where Clay originally calls Matthew's name out and Matthew beats him up on the front law. But this time he calls his name out and they're all waiting for him in the kitchen on Matthew's wedding day. 

And my favourite image in the whole book is that they actually rip the fly screen door off its hinges. I'm getting a bit emotional even thinking about it because it was such an important part of my life. And so, in a way, you don't have the beauty of that without the previous violence. I think we're all mixing these things up within our lives, sort of going “okay, how much is too much? What mistakes were made?” We all have tempers flare, but it's just about understanding those things from a viewpoint of humanity, rather than getting to a point where it exceeds the limits of what’s acceptable. 

I don't think any of us actually want to be perfect. And that's why even as a dad sometimes, you know, I'll say things at home just so that my kids don’t have this “perfect upbringing.” You know, kids have got to have stories about their crazy parents. 

I know I talk a lot, but I hope you can make some sense out of that answer.

Yeah, so at the end of it, there's a sense of growth and pushing through the violence you've had to find some kind of maybe even a distilled kind of love.  

Yeah, well, and you don't get to truly beautiful things in a lot of ways without that struggle. 

I guess there are different types of beauty. There's beauty in the natural world that you just have to stop and appreciate it, but you can't without stopping. And in the case of, you know, the beauty of the love and forgiveness between Matthew and Clay, a true understanding only comes through all of the hard things they had to go through together. 

You compared the process of writing Bridge of Clay to the Odyssey. Like you went to war with the book and fought through this long journey until it was perfect. Did you love the finished product more as a result of it?  

I don't think so. I think I see, especially the more time that comes away from Bridge of Clay, I'm always apologizing for one of my books. I used to apologize about The Messenger, which came before The Book Thief, just saying, “oh, I got the ending wrong, the execution wasn't right,” and so on. But lately I've been apologizing for Bridge of Clay, like “yeah, well, people didn't love it as much as The Book Thief en masse,” and “oh, it's big and it's a bit hard for people to navigate.” 

But I see both sides of it. I look at it as is. Yeah, I could have done things a lot better. I could have cut some elements out of it, but I also don't regret it because I was just absolutely giving that book everything that I had. And I'm sort of glad that it is the way it is, and that it isn't palatable for everybody, and that it sorts out the tough readers from the not-so-tough readers. 

So am I happy with it? You know, I'm happy with everything I did, but if I had to do it again, I'd make some changes. But that also applies to The Book Thief. That also applies to The Messenger. And so it was the best I could do with what I had at the time, and I'm okay with it.

Would you advise young writers to be stubborn with their stories or just keep looking until they find something that comes easily? 

I think a bit of both. One of my number one pieces of advice for young writers is to know when to take it easy on yourself. Because I was always sort of going “ah, you've got no hunger,” you know, because I wrote two novels that didn't get published and I couldn't write anymore. This was it while I was at university: second year, third year, fourth year. So I had three years that felt really fallow, and I couldn't even start a book, let alone write through and finish one. 

And now what I realize is that, in that time I was just trying to find my own voice. I was reading books that I loved, and just trying to find ways to write books that only I could write. And so the idea is, yes, stubbornly you have to hang oin. But it's a bit like how these days you have those motivational speakers and motivational content like “you must get up and you must do your hundred push-ups every day, otherwise you're weak and you're soft.” So okay, yes, there's a time for that in writing. And there's also a time when you go “this isn't quite the right time,” and actually, that time is still coming. 

And so sometimes you’re just building up the strength and the courage to face those fears and to sit down at your desk. And a writer needs to know when that's happening. It's okay to be there, and to just work up to the idea of writing again. I’m even like that right now. 

But then what I would say after that is, when you do commit, then really commit. And that doesn't mean you write all the way through. You might have a day where you go, “I can take a day off because I worked that other day,” or “I can take a week off or a month off.” So just know that you can take it easy on yourself. 

The biggest test of whether you really are a writer and you really want to do it, is that you will turn up again at the desk. 

It was an honour to speak with Zusak, not just because of his status and success as a writer, but also because of the incredible depth of character he revealed to me in conversation. He is kitchen-y, kind, and able to speak about the most solemn truths with great humility and humour. Witnessing firsthand the amount of thought, care, and even doubt that goes into these books was like uncovering the results of a classroom science experiment; expected, but nonetheless sublime. I hope my transcription inspires other young writers to “turn up again at the desk” as much as it did myself.