All the Light We Cannot See - Large Print Edition

Doerr creates a haunting masterpiece of WWII fiction with All the Light We Cannot See. Weaving together the stories of a 17-year-old German soldier and a 16-year-old blind French girl, Doerr shows all the hell of war but also the beauty of humanity. I raced through this completely riveting 500-page book in three days, desperately hoping for an outcome that wasn't horrific. St. Malo, the walled coastal city in France, becomes a character in its own right: both utterly charming yet frighteningly overrun with Nazis.

Radio technology, three-dimensional maps, and a priceless jewel drive the plot, but the real kernel of truth here is the absolute transcendence of human kindness over the most unimaginable circumstances. The raw emotion with which Doerr anoints his story bumps it up into a class beyond your average WWII novel into the status of a modern classic. Doerr's profound book is a must-read. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

A BAM! President's Pick and National Book Award Finalist

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 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.

Large Print Edition