The Thief Lord
Cornelia Funke
Germany’s J.K. Rowling
From Herr der Diebe to Tintenblut
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She writes imaginative tales for children. She has the same American and British publishers as J.K. Rowling. Many reviewers have compared her books favorably to the Harry Potter series. And now Cornelia Funke's German bestseller, Herr der Diebe (first published in 2000), is available to English-speaking readers as The Thief Lord. A movie version of the book played in European cinemas in early 2006. In the U.S. the Thief Lord film (in English) was released on DVD on March 14, 2006 without any theatrical run.
Instead of J.K. Rowling's Harry, Ron, and Hermione in England, Funke serves up Scipio (the "Thief Lord"), Prosper, and Bo in Italy—in Venice to be exact. In our previous article about Harry Potter in German we wrote about the advantages of using the German and English versions as an interesting way to learn German. Of course, the same holds true for Funke's Herr der Diebe/The Thief Lord, the only difference being that in the case of Cornelia Funke's books, you'll be reading the original German and an English translation rather than the other way around for the Harry Potter series.
There are some similarities between
the Rowling and Funke stories, but also
many differences. You can read more
about both in our Review of The Thief Lord.
Herr der Diebe was first published in Germany in 2000, but it is not the first children's book by Cornelia Funke. The noted German author is no newcomer. She has written or illustrated over 40 children's books in German. You can read more about her other German titles in Part 2 of this article.
Cornelia Funke was born in Dorsten, Westphalia (Westfalen) in 1958. At the age of 18 she left that region of central Germany for the northern city of Hamburg, where she lives and works. (More recently she has been working in the U.S., where she has relatives.) She is married and has two children. Funke began her publishing career as an illustrator of children's books. Eventually she decided that she wanted to write her own stories so that she could draw what she really wanted to. Her own illustrations grace the pages of The Thief Lord and many of her other books.
The Thief Lord DVD (2006)
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Inkheart - English translation
of Tintenherz by Cornelia Funke.
Book or audio cassette. Compare prices
The German movie poster
for Herr der Diebe (2006).
How Funke's Herr der Diebe came to be translated into English is an interesting tale in itself. After the huge success of Herr der Diebe in Germany, she was determined to match that success in the English-language book market. She asked her cousin Oliver Latsch to translate Herr der Diebe into English, at her own expense, so that she could market the book to English-language publishers. Shortly after Macmillan had shown interest in The Thief Lord, Barry Cunningham, the discoverer of J.K. Rowling, entered the picture and bought the worldwide English rights for both Herr der Diebe and Drachenreiter, an earlier book by Funke that had also been popular in German. Cunningham's interest was sparked by an inquiry from an 11-year-old bilingual girl living in England who had written him to ask why her favorite German book was not available in English. So now Funke's English-language books are handled by the same publishers that had such success with Harry Potter: Scholastic in the U.S. and The Chicken House in the U.K. (Funke's German publisher is the Cecilie Dressler Verlag.)
NEXT > More books by Funke - and a movie version of The Thief Lord
- Review: The Thief Lord (book)
- Compare Prices for The Thief Lord book
- Compare Prices for The Thief Lord DVD
- Compare Prices for Inkheart
- Compare Prices for Inkspell
- Herr der Diebe and other German books from The German Way Bookstore
- Deutsche Bücher von Cornelia Funke (her German books)