Zusak is the author of six books. His first three books, The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and When Dogs Cry, released between 1999 and 2001, were all published internationally. The Messenger, published in 2002, won the 2003 CBC Book of the Year Award (Older Readers) and the 2003 NSW Premier’s Literary Award (Ethel Turner Prize) in Australia and was a runner-up for the Printz Award in America.

The Messenger (I Am the Messenger in the United States) was published in 2002 and was one of Zusak’s first novels. This novel has won awards such as the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards: Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature.

The Book Thief was published in 2005 and has since been translated into more than 40 languages. The Book Thief was adapted as a film of the same name in 2013. In 2014, Zusak delivered a Ted Talk, called ‘The Failurist’ at the Sydney Opera House. It focused on his drafting process and journey to success through writing The Book Thief.

In 2006, Zusak was also the recipient of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Australian Novelist of the Year Award.

In 2014, Zusak won the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association (ALA), which annually recognises an author and “a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature”.

In March 2016 Zusak talked about his then unfinished novel Bridge of Clay. He stated that the book was 90% finished but that, “… I’m a completely different person than the person who wrote The Book Thief. And this is also the scary thing—I’m a different person to the one who started Bridge of Clay eight, nine years ago … I’ve got to get it done this year, or else I’ll probably finally have to set it aside.”