Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

#1 Best Seller
$9.40
Last updated Nov 4, 2026 at 2:32am
Anthony Doerr

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.

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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)

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