about the book
Living in Paris with her father, the locksmith for the Museum of Natural History, Marie-Laure goes blind when she’s only six. In order for her to navigate their neighborhood, her father builds a perfect miniature of the area for Marie-Laure to memorize.
In a German mining town, Werner and his little sister are orphans. When Werner finds an old radio, he’s fascinated. He learns to build and fix radios.
Years later World War II begins.
Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris with one of the Museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewels. Werner is recruited by a brutal Hitler Youth academy, saving him from the mines, but forcing him to choose between opportunity and morality.
When Werner is sent on a special assignment to track the Resistance, he ends up in a coastal city in France.
Do the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner ever cross? If so, how?
about the author
Anthony Doerr was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He began writing about Lego and Playmobile pirates on his mother’s typewriter when he was eight.
He has always been fascinated by how stories and novels can transport readers. How can a boy from Ohio actually be in Narnia? He believes it’s because “writers stitch together dreams” and tell the stories in ways that don’t wake their readers up until it’s all over.
The idea for his book All the Light We Cannot See began when he was on a train headed to Penn Station to visit his publisher in New York. A guy in the seat in front of him got physically angry when his cell phone dropped his call. Since our society has forgotten what a miracle it is to speak to someone using light waves, Anthony started thinking about different ways to remind readers about how the radio was so strange when it came out—all he could think of was a boy trapped somewhere and a girl reading a story to him. The circumstances, the time period, and the characters were still a mystery.
Ten years later, he had a book. That’s right, it took Anthony ten years to write his National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Thank goodness he stuck with it. He was also working on, and finished, other projects during that time.
Anthony hates peanut butter. He can still remember his mom making it from scratch, pouring all the oil into her Cuisnart. The sound of everything whipping together…he can’t stand it!
Anthony lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and twin sons.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview: The Rumpus
Author interview: Powell’s
Author interview: Keys to the Page
13 Facts about the Author and All the Light We Cannot See
Also by Anthony Doerr:
Memory Wall : Stories. Scribner. 2010.
Four Seasons in Rome. Scribner. 2007.
The Shell Collector : Stories. Scribner. 2002.
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