All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Summary
Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller 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.
Book Setting: France
Paris, France
Saint Malo
Evreux
Plage du Mole
L’hotel des Abeilles (Hotel Porte St Pierre)
Poterne D’Estrees
Cathedral of Saint Malo
Gare Saint-Lazare
Rue vauborel
Rue des Cordiers
Rue Jacques Cartier
Rue de Mirbel and rue Monge
Rue des Patriarches
Rue Cuvier
Berlin
UNESCO-Welterbe Zollverein
Essen
Château de Saint-Malo
Holland Bastion
Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle
Breitenau Concentration Camp Memorial
Sardinia
Reviews
“Hauntingly beautiful.”
- Janet Maslin ― The New York Times
“This jewel of a story is put together like a vintage timepiece, its many threads coming together so perfectly. Doerr’s writing and imagery are stunning. It’s been a while since a novel had me under its spell in this fashion. The story still lives on in my head.”
- Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“Intricate… A meditation on fate, free will, and the way that, in wartime, small choices can have vast consequences.”
- New Yorker