Description

Now adapted into a Netflix limited series from acclaimed producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things), starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and rising newcomer Aria Mia Loberti.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, finalist for the National Book Award, and an instant New York Times bestseller, Anthony Doerr’s masterpiece is a deeply moving and beautifully crafted story centered on two young lives—one, a blind French girl, and the other, a gifted German orphan—whose paths cross dramatically during the turmoil of World War II.

Marie-Laure, a blind girl, lives with her devoted father near the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where he is responsible for its countless locks. When Marie-Laure loses her sight at the age of six, her father lovingly constructs an intricate miniature replica of their neighborhood, allowing her to memorize paths through touch and navigate the world independently. At the onset of Nazi occupation, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris, seeking refuge in the small coastal town of Saint-Malo, where her reclusive great uncle resides in an isolated, towering home by the sea. Along with them they secretly carry what is believed to be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous gemstone.

Meanwhile, Werner, an orphan in a German mining village, grows up fascinated by the mechanics of a crude radio discovered alongside his younger sister. His talent for repairing and building these remarkable instruments earns him admission to a harsh Hitler Youth academy and eventually a specialized assignment tracking down Resistance movements. Increasingly troubled by humanitarian consequences, Werner’s journey eventually brings him to Saint-Malo, where destiny intersects his path with Marie-Laure’s.

Anthony Doerr’s vivid and lyrical prose, described as having an extraordinary “sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle), creates a mesmerizing narrative that explores the human capacity for kindness and compassion even during times of profound darkness. Crafted carefully over the course of ten years, All the Light We Cannot See is a powerful novel by a writer praised for “sentences that never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).