Join Goodreads

and meet your next favorite book!

Sign Up Now

All the Light We Cannot See

by (Goodreads Author)

4.31 455,123 ratings
Your Rating (Clear)
  • Cancel
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France asMore
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious 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.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. 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, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). Less

Friends’ Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up .

Community Reviews

rated it really liked it
9 months ago

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”

I'm going to be honest - love for this book didn't hit me straight away. In fact, my first attempt to read it last year ended with me putting it aside and going... Read full review

rated it it was amazing
about 2 years ago

I always thought, or imagined, that there were these invisible lines trembling in our wake, outlining our trajectories through life, throbbing with electric energy. Lines that sometimes cross one other, or follow in parallel ellipses without ever touching, or meet up for... Read full review

rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

Adult fiction

This book is getting a lot of well-deserved attention for its unique story and its beautiful writing. It starts late in World War II, as the Allies begin shelling the French city of Saint-Malo to drive out the remaining Nazi troops. Our two main characters a... Read full review

rated it it was ok
over 2 years ago

I'm sure this is going to mark me as a literary dud, but for all the brilliant reviews of this book? I couldn't really get into it.

The book revolves around Marie-Laure, a blind girl who lives with her father. Her father is the locksmith at the Paris Museum of Natural Hist... Read full review

rated it really liked it
7 months ago

This book was so beautiful and haunting. I fell in love with so many of the characters, and loved how their lives were weaved together. Knowing the time period this was set in, I knew the ending would hurt. And it did, though I didn't shed as many tears as I expected.
The... Read full review

rated it liked it
2 months ago
Recommends it for: book club read

Shelves: ww2
I enjoyed this novel by Anthony Doerr and yet when I was nearing the end I couldn't help feel a a sense of relief to have finished the book.

I enjoy historical fiction and really looked forward to this novel by Anthony Doerr as it was set in a time frame that that really i... Read full review

Other Books by this Author

  • The Shell Collector
    The Shell Collector
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World
    Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insom...
    by Anthony Doerr
  • About Grace
    About Grace
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Memory Wall
    Memory Wall
    by Anthony Doerr
  • The Snake Handler
    The Snake Handler
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Memory Wall
    Memory Wall
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Two-Minute Entreaty
    Two-Minute Entreaty
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Fast Fiction. The Deep
    Fast Fiction. The Deep
    by Anthony Doerr
  • Zone démilitarisée
    Zone démilitarisée
    by Anthony Doerr

Readers Also Enjoyed

Book Details

Hardcover, 530 pages
Published May 6th 2014 by Scribner
ISBN
1476746583 (ISBN13: 9781476746586)
Edition Language
English
Original Title
All the Light We Cannot See
Characters
Werner Pfennig, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, Frank Volkheimer, Etienne LeBlanc, Frederick More…Werner Pfennig, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, Frank Volkheimer, Etienne LeBlanc, Frederick, Jutta Pfennig, Madame Manec, Reinhold von Rumpel, Frau Elena, Daniel LeBlanc, Dr. Hauptmann, Walter Bernd, Bastian Less
Literary Awards
Pulitzer Prize, Audie Award, ALA Alex Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal More…Pulitzer Prize, Audie Award, ALA Alex Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Idaho Book of the Year Award, National Book Award Finalist, Goodreads Choice Award Less

About this Author

28186. ux50 Anthony Doerr is the author of five books, The Shell Collector , About Grace , Memory Wall , Four Seasons in Rome and All the Light We Cannot See . Doerr’s fiction has won four 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 Barnes & Noble...

Genres

Quotes

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.
But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?
Don’t you want to be alive before you die?

Discussions