All the Light We Cannot See
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, 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. 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 o
Where All the Light We Cannot See keeps showing up
14 of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Books in conversation with All the Light We Cannot See
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about All the Light We Cannot See
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A blind girl flees Paris with her father and a possibly cursed jewel as the Nazis close in. A German orphan with a gift for radios is recruited into the Reich. The war bends them toward Saint-Malo.
Yes. All the Light We Cannot See won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award and was a New York Times bestseller for years.
Yes. Netflix released a four-part limited series adaptation in 2023, directed by Shawn Levy and starring newcomer Aria Mia Loberti as Marie-Laure. The series condenses the novel and was met with mixed reviews from book fans.
All the Light We Cannot See was written by Anthony Doerr, published in 2014 by Scribner.
All the Light We Cannot See is 544 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, All the Light We Cannot See takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
All the Light We Cannot See is a standalone novel by Anthony Doerr, not part of a series.
All the Light We Cannot See is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.