All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel
About this product
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book 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, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” ( Los Angeles Times ). Read more
Editor's Take
Amazon reviewers say this novel is wonderful, haunting, and beautifully written, with many praising its rich prose, memorable characters, and emotional impact. The overall sentiment is strongly positive, with readers frequently describing it as thought-provoking, poignant, and a real page-turner.
There are also strong reviews outside Amazon: YouTube reviewers and discussion videos generally praise the book’s writing, historical setting, and emotional depth, while some mention its length or pacing as minor drawbacks. The book appears to resonate especially with readers who like literary historical fiction set during World War II.
- Amazon reviewers: praise the writing, characters, and overall beauty of the novel.
- YouTube reviewers: largely call it a powerful, well-written historical novel.
The search results included real YouTube watch pages for book-review content about this exact title, so two relevant video IDs were found.
Price History
Specifications
| Genre | Fiction |
| Illustrated | No |
Product Details
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Publication date | April 4, 2017 |
| Edition | Reprint |
| Language | English |
| Print length | 544 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1501173219 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1501173219 |
| Item Weight | 15.2 ounces |
| Dimensions | 5.2 x 7.91 x 1.18 inches |
| Best Sellers Rank | #601 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1 in Military Historical Fiction #5 in War Fiction (Books) #7 in TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (174,992) |