LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever. My heart was stolen by Marie-Laure, who turned blind at six-years-old. We follow her endearing, and enduring friendship with the wonderful Werner, a German orphan, against the savage backdrop of the second world war. Never is our faith in the innate goodness of people more tested than during the horrors of war, but in these two characters we are reminded that no matter how great the odds against you, hope and kindness will remain long after the final bullets have been fired. One of my all time favourites.
Selected by Chris Whitaker, Our Spring 2022 Guest Editor. Click here to read the full Guest Editor Piece.
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One of our Books of the Year 2015.
May 2015 Book of the Month.
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
A big book in every way, powerful, intensely moving and awe inspiring. It traces the lives of blind Marie and orphan Werner through World War II. Werner is a whizz with fixing things and is pushed into Hitler’s Youth and on into the heart of the fighting until he lands up in St Malo on the Brittany coast where he meets Marie. Marie has fled there from Paris as the Germans advanced. The novel takes us through to the present. It is an epic story of the horror of war, the suffering and endurance illuminated with many acts of kindness. Beautifully written, it is a memorable, haunting tale. Doerr is an author to note being chosen by Granta as one of 21 Best Young American Novelists of the moment. ~ Sarah Broadhurst
Reviewed by Sarah BroadhurstSarah Broadhurst spent her early working life in the book trade in both retail and wholesale until the arrival of children forced her to look for freelance work she could do from…
More reviews by Sarah Broadhurst About All the Light We Cannot See
The epic new novel, set during WW2, from Sunday Times Short Story Prize-winner Anthony Doerr. Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home.
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All the Light We Cannot See Synopsis
The epic new novel, set during WW2, from Sunday Times Short Story Prize-winner Anthony Doerr. Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home.
But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father's life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering.
At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in. Doerr's combination of soaring imagination and meticulous observation is electric.
As Europe is engulfed by war and lives collide unpredictably, 'All The Light We Cannot See' is a captivating and devastating elegy for innocence.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780008138301 |
| Publication date: |
23rd April 2015 |
| Author: |
Anthony Doerr |
| Publisher: |
Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
531 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Anthony Doerr Press Reviews
'This jewel of a story is put together like a vintage timepiece ... Doerr's writing and imagery are stunning. It's been a while since a novel had me under its spell in this fashion.'
Abraham Verghese, author of 'Cutting for Stone'
All the Light We Cannot See is a dazzling, epic work of fiction. Anthony Doerr writes beautifully about the mythic and the intimate, about snails on beaches and armies on the move, about fate and love and history and those breathless, unbearable moments when they all come crashing together - Jess Walter, author of 'Beautiful Ruins'
'Doerr sees the world as a scientist, but feels it as a poet. He knows about everything-radios, diamonds, mollusks, birds, flowers, locks, guns-but he also writes a line so beautiful, creates an image or scene so haunting, it makes you think forever differently about the big things-love, fear, cruelty, kindness, the countless facets of the human heart ... Doerr's new novel is that novel, the one you savor, and ponder, and happily lose sleep over, then go around urging all your friends to read-now.' - J.R. Moehringer, author of 'Sutton and 'The Tender Bar'
Author
About Anthony Doerr
Anthony Doerr is the author of four books, The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome and Memory Wall. Doerr's short fiction has won three O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Rome Prize, and shared the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award with Jonathan Safran Foer. In 2007 Granta placed Doerr on its list of the 21 Best Young American novelists. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.
Author photo © Jerry Bauer
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