Ten years ago, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief first hit shelves. Its impact could not be denied.

The Book Thief spent 230 weeks on the New York Times list; it was an international bestseller, and won armfuls of literary awards. In the decade since its publication, every time I heard the book mentioned it was with awe — especially when compared to the lackluster film adaptation released in 2013.

I first read The Book Thief as a teenager, not long after it was published, and my memories fit with my friends' reverent reviews. But for this anniversary I figured it was time to pick up the book again and look at it through the eyes of a more well-read and skeptical adult.

Did the book hold up? Was it truly as amazing as the literary world would have you think? Absolutely.

The Book Thief, for those who missed the literary juggernaut in 2006, is the story of a young German girl named Liesel. During World War II, she and her friends and family struggle to survive. She is the titular book thief, as she sees the power of words and attempts to reclaim them in a time when Nazi propaganda is in the ascendancy. Oh, and the entire story is narrated by Death itself.

Given this summary, you might assume the book is pretentious. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. Zusak seems to use the device of his unearthly narrator as license to be overly flowery and needlessly arty. Death's asides to the reader are both grandiose and morbid. For example, he refers to a recently deceased teenager as having "her whole death [now] ahead of her."

Death consistently reminds the reader that despite his job, he has a heart. Perhaps this was to mitigate the sheer amount of death in the story, but it comes off as excessive. Zusak is often incredibly heavy-handed:

Still, even with the superfluous language, The Book Thief more than deserves its reputation. At its heart, it's a story about the power of language. When we think about World War II, we often minimize the fact that Hitler's words brought him to power. Those words, that propaganda, helped fuel the terror and tragedy that haunted a continent.

Zusak went beyond the average Holocaust story. He showed the ruined lives of average Germans, including those who risked everything to do the right thing. (The plot was inspired by the story of his parents, who grew up in World War II Europe).

As for his decision to use Death as a narrator, the positives did outweigh the negatives.

Everyone reading this book knows what happened in Germany between 1939 and 1945. Zusak plays into this with his nearly omniscient narrator, who is telling the story at some future date. While the foreshadowing does get excessive at times (he talks about Liesel's impending book thievery every 3 pages in the first half), the overall device is the best way to play with the readers' expectations and existing knowledge.

He tells us who will die long before it happens, and yet once the moment arrived I couldn't help but sob.

Zusak has a gift for playing with expectations and tropes. Many stories have been written about Jews during the Holocaust who bristle with their inability to fight back, and The Book Thief's one central Jewish character is no exception. Max is a former boxer hiding in Liesel's family's basement, who daydreams of a boxing match against Hitler.

But this isn't like Captain America punching the Fuhrer on the cover of his comic. This is a man whose life and family have been destroyed by a regime. Even his dreams highlight the hopelessness of the fight. He sees his enemies in Hitler, the imagined referee, and scores of imaginary Germans ready to jump into the ring to rip him apart.

But in Max's mind he gets up after every punch even while knowing he's been physically beaten.

In the end, Zusak tells a necesarry story in a heartbreaking way. The generation of survivors from the Holocaust — and those Germans like Zusak's parents —- are nearly gone. Evil still exists in the world, and the stories of World War II are important when it comes to teaching us about human capacity for cruelty.

But it also teaches us about our capacity for good, and about the power of words for good and ill.

"I have hated the words and I have loved them," Zusak wrote, "and I hope I have made the right." He certainly did. Zusak's words have the ability to move readers, even ten years later.

Love The Book Thief? Or thinking of reading it for the first time? Here's a sneak peek at the bonus content in the Tenth Anniversary Edition.