All the Light We Cannot See

“A stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.”

Author : Doerr, Anthony

Edition : London: Fourth Estate

Doerr, Anthony. All the light we cannot see: a novel. London: Fourth Estate, 2015. (M DOE)

Pulitzer Prize – Fiction 2015

“Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.”

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18143977-all-the-light-we-cannot-see

A little about the author

“Anthony Doerr was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1973. His first published book was a collection of short stories called “The Shell Collector” (2002). This was followed by the novel, “About Grace” (2004), a memoir entitled “Four Seasons in Rome” (2010), and another collection of short stories, “Memory Wall” (2010). Doerr’s second novel, “All the Light We Cannot See,” was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction” and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015, earning him international recognition. Besides writing books, he also writes a column on science books for the “Boston Globe” newspaper and is a contributor to “The Morning News,” an online magazine. Doerr lives with his wife and two sons in Boise, Idaho.”