All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, is a sprawling, nonlinear narrative set in World War II and told from the perspectives of two children—Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig—as they grow up in the midst of a world torn apart. Told in short, alternating chapters, Doerr juxtaposes the destruction caused by the war against his young characters’ fascinations with technology and nature. Critics and readers lauded the 2014 novel, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and spent more than 200 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.

Inspiration for the novel

Doerr got the idea for the novel in 2004 while taking a train trip. A fellow passenger, disgruntled when a phone call disconnected as the train went through a tunnel, sparked Doerr to take an interest in long-distance communication. A year later, when his travels took him through Saint-Malo, in the Brittany region of France, he decided he would set the novel there. He then spent the next 10 years meticulously researching and writing.

Plot summary

Editor’s note: Contains spoilers.

Marie-Laure is a blind French girl interested in marine biology, and Werner is an inquisitive German orphan who is a bit of a prodigy when it comes to radio electronics. The novel covers the years from 1934 to 1945 but follows a nonlinear timeline. Marie-Laure and her widowed father, Daniel, a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History, live in wartime Paris. In 1940 Daniel decides to flee with his daughter to the seaport town of Saint-Malo to stay with her great-uncle and World War I veteran, Etienne, who used to broadcast scientific programs on the radio. Daniel creates a detailed model of Saint-Malo for Marie-Laure so that she can learn to navigate her new home.

But before they leave Daniel becomes part of a plan concocted by the museum’s curator to save from Nazi looters a priceless treasure, a gemstone called the Sea of Flames. Legend has it that anyone who possesses the stone will have eternal life but that their loved ones will face interminable sorrow. The curator has sent four gems (three fake and one real) across the country, and one of them goes with Marie-Laure and Daniel, who hides the diamond in the Saint-Malo model. During the war Daniel is convicted of conspiracy and imprisoned in Germany. This leaves Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and his housekeeper, Madame Manec.

As the novel skips through time, it also ping-pongs in perspective between Marie-Laure and Werner. In 1934 the 8-year-old boy has already demonstrated his formidable talents by fixing a broken radio found by his sister, Jutta. They spend hours listening to radio programs from across Europe, including, pivotally, some of Etienne’s broadcasts. When, in 1940, Werner earns a spot in a Nazi school because of his prowess, Jutta, who has come to hate the Nazis, objects. At the school he studies radio technology alongside a bright student named Frank Volkheimer. Volkheimer seems to embody Nazi principles—and later leads the division of the German army that Werner joins—but there are signs that he has become disenchanted by Nazi propaganda.

That is how Werner winds up in 1944 stationed as a radio engineer alongside Volkheimer in a Nazi stronghold just a few blocks from where Marie-Laure and Etienne live in Saint-Malo. Since her father’s capture Marie-Laure has become active in the Resistance. She helps to secure codes, sometimes hidden in loaves of bread, and gives them to Etienne, who secretly transmits his radio broadcasts, which now focus not on science but on messages to the Resistance.

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While working for the Nazis, Werner recognizes Etienne’s voice over the radio but chooses not to disclose the old man’s location to his team. Instead he finds where Etienne is broadcasting from and becomes infatuated with Marie-Laure. Meanwhile, Reinhold von Rumpel, sergeant major for the Nazi forces, is on the hunt for the Sea of Flames and has already found the three replicas. Maniacal and cruel, he tracks the real Sea of Flames to Marie-Laure and Etienne’s home.

The most pivotal events of the novel occur during the Battle of Saint-Malo. Werner and Volkheimer become trapped in the rubble of the Nazi headquarters. Realizing they will die if they don’t get out, Volkheimer uses a grenade to free them. Werner escapes to Marie-Laure’s house and, upon finding von Rumpel there, kills him. He and Marie-Laure share a brief exchange, and as they flee Saint-Malo, she places the model of Etienne’s house, with the Sea of Flames inside, in a gated grotto filled with rainwater so that it can be returned to the sea, completing the cycle of the legend and breaking its curse. She gives Werner the key to the grotto before he helps her get to safety. Werner is ultimately captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, where he dies.

The novel then fast-forwards 30 years. Volkheimer has sought out Werner’s sister to give her Werner’s belongings, including Marie-Laure’s model house. He tells her about Werner and Marie-Laure, and Jutta travels to Paris with the model house in hopes of finding her. There she meets up with Marie-Laure, now a marine biologist at the Museum of Natural History. Inside the model house is the key to the grotto where the Sea of Flames had been left.

About the author

Anthony Doerr began writing at age 8, using his mother’s typewriter to pound out tales involving Lego blocks and pirates. He studied history at Bowdoin College in Maine and got a master’s degree in creative writing from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Before All the Light We Cannot See he had published two short-story collections, a memoir about living in Rome, and a novel.

Doerr’s previous work had received positive reviews and he had picked up some literary awards, yet the critical and popular success of All the Light We Cannot See surprised the author. In addition to its at-times confusing structure, the narrative includes elaborate descriptions of early-20th-century radio technology. “The kinds of readers I’m writing for, I thought they would like it, but I didn’t think that Aunt Judy would read it,” he told The New York Times in 2014.

Netflix turned All the Light We Cannot See into a limited series in 2023, but the adaptation did not win the same accolades as the novel. In 2021 Doerr published Cloud Cuckoo Land, his first novel since All the Light We Cannot See. It received mixed reviews but was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife, Shauna Eastman. The couple has twin sons.