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All I knew is that I had a blind girl reading a story to a boy over the radio. On setting the book in Saint-Malo during World War IIįor about a year after hearing that conversation on the train, I did not know where or yet quite when I was going to set the book. originally, the real central motivation for the book was to try and conjure up a time when hearing the voice of a stranger in your home was a miracle. The result is an epic tale of two lives intertwining, as every chapter - each just a few pages long - jumps between viewpoints, countries and times.ĭoerr spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about his inspiration for the novel and why it's still important to write and think about World War II.Īnthony Doerr is the author of five books of fiction, including his newest novel, All The Light We Cannot See, and the award-winning short story collection The Shell Collector. Some 500 miles to the east, a German orphan named Werner believes he's escaped to a better life when his talents with radio sweep him up into a Nazi education. First, there's a young French girl named Marie-Laure, blind and led through the winding streets of coastal citadel Saint-Malo by her locksmith father. His solution was to "dwell, very specifically" on two new, unfamiliar perspectives of war-ridden Europe. He even says that he worried about that as he was writing his new novel, All The Light We Cannot See. "There are so many books written about the war, supposedly if you drop them on Germany it would cover the whole country," he jokes. Author Anthony Doerr will freely admit that.

In the world of fiction, World War II is well-trod territory.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title All the Light We Cannot See Author Anthony Doerr