It was a runner-up for the 1997 Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor Book. It is the first in the Queen's Thief series, the sixth book of which was published in 2020. The Thief has been recorded as an audiobook with a variety of narrators.The Thief is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner published in 1996 by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of William Morrow (later, of HarperCollins). Indonesian ( The Thief: Sang Pencuri dari Eddis).It has been released in the following languages:

The Thief has been published with five different cover illustrations in the United States, and received new covers for various international editions (see Cover Gallery, below.) Other translations reused the artwork of either Vince Natale or Joel Tippie. It is revealed that Gen is actually Eugenides, the Queen's Thief of Eddis, and that he had been pretending to be a common Sounisian in order to trick the magus into revealing the location of the Gift. The three make their way to the Eddisian capital, where Gen presents the queen with Hamiathes's Gift. Gen refuses, and escapes Attolia along with the magus and Sophos. The queen of Attolia, suspecting Gen's true identity, asks him to work in her service. Pol and Ambiades are both killed, and Gen is gravely wounded. After several close encounters, the group is finally captured by the Attolians. The group is ambushed by Attolian soldiers, who had been made aware of their mission and location by Ambiades, who was an informant to the Attolian queen. Outside the temple, Gen temporarily surrenders the Gift to the magus, only to surreptitiously steal it back shortly after. In the hidden room, the Old Gods appear before Gen, and he takes the Gift from the Great Goddess Hephestia. Gen spends three nights searching the temple, and eventually realizes that there is a hidden room behind a wall of Hephestial glass. He believes that the Gift is hidden in a secret, nearly inaccessible temple hidden by the Aracthus river. The magus eventually reveal that he is searching for Hamiathes's Gift, which he hopes to use to convince the queen of Eddis to marry the king of Sounis. The group travels east into Eddis and then Attolia. They are joined by the magus’s two apprentices, Sophos and Ambiades, and by a soldier named Pol. Without telling Gen where they are going, he takes him out of the city. The magus finds Gen filthy, uncouth, and insolent, but he needs Gen’s skills as a thief for a secret mission. A young thief named Eugenides is released from prison by the magus of Sounis, a scholar and one of the king's top advisors.

The thief turner