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
Sarah Broadhurst
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All the Light We Cannot See Synopsis
Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.
Open your eyes, and see what you can with them before they close forever
For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes: the miniature model of her Paris neighbourhood she traces with her fingers; the microscopic layers within the diamond in the Museum of Natural History; the unmapped future which brings her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, whose talents draw the attention of the Hitler Youth.
A deeply moving novel about the ways people try to be good to one another, All the Light We Cannot See has touched the hearts of millions of readers across the world, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
'Far more than a conventional war story, it's a tightly focused epic … A bittersweet and moving novel that lingers in the mind' Daily Mail
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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'
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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