Information about Markus Zusak - Sarah

Markus Zusak was born at the 23 June 1975 in Sydney. He’s an australian author and the son of an austrian painter, his mother was german. First he also wanted to become a painter but after a while it just bored him.
With 16 years he started to write and seven years later his first book “the underdog” was sold. 2002 he got famous with the book “I am the Messenger”, which he got many awards for. The most famous book he wrote, in the year 2006, is “the book thief” and he became very successful with it.
Today Markus Zusak lives in Sydney with his wife and his little daughter. He loves to surf and watching good movies. But he’s not just a writer, he’s also an english teacher at High school.
He got the idea for writing “I am the Messenger” when he was sitting in a park and in front of him was a fifteen minute parking zone and he thought, that that’s not very long and every time when he go to the bank it took much longer time than fifteen minutes. After that he thought about, what’s when the bank would be robbed and the car of a victim would be outside, in a fifteen minute parking zone, so he started to write the book.
The question where he got his ideas from he answered with the following sentences:
“I started writing when I was sixteen. I’m thirty now. I get my ideas from fourteen years of thinking about it.”
Some prices he had won for “I am the Messenger” are:
2007 Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis
2006 Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book
2005 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year-Children
2003 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award
2003 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature