A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel 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, from the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr.

Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorise it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.

In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialised tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

Doerr’s gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr 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 his most ambitious and dazzling work.

Listening Length

17 hours and 1 minute
Author

Anthony Doerr
Narrator

Julie Teal
Audible release date

8 May 2014
Language

English
Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers Limited
ASIN

B00NMAV83S
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	17 hours and 1 minute
Author	Anthony Doerr
Narrator	Julie Teal
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	08 May 2014
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NMAV83S
Best Sellers Rank	256 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 1 in 20th Century Historical Romance (Audible Books & Originals) 2 in War Fiction (Books) 2 in Historical Military Fiction

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Top reviews from Australia

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A Dark Light.

Reviewed in Australia on 29 May 2021

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All The Lights We Cannot See is brilliantly written. It isn't a book I usually read. I found myself in a different world.
The characters are wonderful with the main two both brave souls.
Werner Pfennig has a sister, Jutta, Werner fines he can fix wireless, he and Jutta find a station broadcasting lessons on science. Once people know, all call on Werner to fix their wireless. With war braking out Werner knows he wont go down the mines. So he does a hard cause which he passes that lead him down a place of darkness.
Then there's young Marie - Laure who sadly goes blind. With the help of her loving father she is taught brail from books he buys her and ways for finding herself around with her cain by counting. As the casualties of war start, Marie - Laure is taken to her great uncle Elienne LeBlain's place. When Marie-Laure's father goes out one day, never to return, it's Elienne the one who always hides away from the past, brings life back to Marie-Laure and himself, who has began to love his great niece. One day he takes her to the 6th floor where he shows her his wireless hidden inside a wardrobe at the back. Sometime later, finding herself all alone when her uncle doesn't return she goes to the wardrobe where she reads out her books and plays music. It at the ending of the war and while playing with the wireless, Werner hears it. They go out looking, Werner finds Marie-Laure he says to her..."You are very brave ", She lowers the bucket "What's is your name?. He tells her, When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was very brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it's not brave, I had no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the sane?"
He says."Not in many years. But today. Today maybe I did",
It was from Marie -Laure that Werner learns out the lessons on science , he and his sister listerned to came from, Marie - Laure's grandfather all that time ago.
A very sad read, that makes war, so sad to those who were too young, as these were.
Highly recommended read.

4 people found this helpful

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Austea

Marred by elementary technical gaffes about radio, by an excessively chopped up timeline that undermines suspense.

Reviewed in Australia on 3 April 2019

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It is inexplicable why a technically ignorant author did not either read up on radio or use an appropriate editor. Not only do the blunders occur throughout this novel, they are intrusive and affect the plot.

It is gauche to lift an incident ("He fixes radio by thinking") straight out of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman s autobiographical stories and assign it to a child half Feynman s age at the time, as if to make Werner twice as smart.

The radio blunders are also historical. Elementary research would have shown that Grundig did not make radios until after the War. It is anomalous to have a Nazi officer own an American Philco while German Telefunkin and Siemans radios of the period were just as complex, and as emphasised in the book, it was unpatriotic to own a US one. Dirty cardboard cutout Russian rapists have crude and contemptible radios. In fact, Russian army field radios were either supplied by the US or close copies. None were "milled out of steel".

Though Werner s radio location team hunted in areas with the German armies and SS extermination squads that massacred prisoners, Jews, Poles and Russian civilians alike, there is no mention of this.

The historical setting of wartime France, particularly after 1943, is unrealistic because the roles of the Resistance, collaborators and the Vichy government are ignored. As D-day approached it would have been dangerous for lone German officers and soldiers to wander about, especially if they were robbing French civilians. No acts of sabotage are recounted, yet the Hotel of the Bees which housed an 88 never lost power or supplies. By the way, bumblebees do not make honey.

10 people found this helpful

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David R Henderson

A great book

Reviewed in Australia on 23 January 2022

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I think this is one of the best books I have read recently. It is a story of children in the time of war, told from the French and German perspective. The child protagonists are both faced with difficult circumstances and overcome them by ability and perseverance and their stories are interwoven through the book.
This book has been very favourably reviewed, which is well deserved.

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Susanna Lynley

Not a Page Turner

Reviewed in Australia on 9 April 2016

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This is a beautifully written book. The research was impressive and detailed but the pace of the book was interminably slow and made even more so by flashbacks which were at times confusing. The prose became more important than the plot and consequently hindered the rhythm of the work, as a result it was far too long and unnecessarily drawn out. If it had been more tightly edited and it was much shorter, it would have been a more satisfactory experience for this reader.

8 people found this helpful

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Let there be Light

Reviewed in Australia on 21 September 2015

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The book was recommended to me three days ago by young people's literary reader/judge - Australian educator and hero of mine - Ernie Tucker. Jules Verne is part of my childhood, along with German family connections - and stretched though they may be - to a brutalising Hitler Youth School - to Göring - to Stuttgart - to France - my brother's wife and family - his father-in-law a pow through the war in Poland, Germany - to finding ways towards a better way in our world and peaceful connections - the themes of generosity and love and loyalty to friends - the abuses of selfishness and superiority and greed - and the way that good is remembered - the incredible synchronicities or coincidences of this novel are absolutely NOT beyond the realms of truth - in fact it is the serendipity and chance which makes it most believable. I understand this book is winning all the prizes - as indeed it should. Thank-you Anthony for a true gem - au clair de la lune!

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Top reviews from other countries

Lady Vibart

A page turning, brilliantly sensitive story of courage, love and the cruelty of war, studded with characters we all recognise!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 July 2018

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I came across this novel accidentally and it's one of the most moving and exciting I've read for a long time. The story is set in WW2 Europe, mainly France and Germany but also Russia etc. It tells the story of a young girl, Marie Laure who went blind as a child and lives in Paris with her father, Daniel Leblanc, a gifted locksmith and miniaturist who works at a prestigious museum as keeper of the keys, and makes models of the city and its streets to teach his daughter how to find her way around the city. They live for each other. At the same time, we meet little Werner Pffenig, and orphan who lives in an orphanage in Germany with his sister, Jutta, under the maternal eye of Elena, the French matron. They listen to broadcasts in French that speak of the earth’s wonders, of brilliant birds, flowers and stars , on a recycled radio that Werner has managed to assemble from street detritus. That is his great skill, working with all things electrical, especially radio transmitters. His future is mapped out for him, he will be sent down the mines to help the Fatherland, the Fuhrer, etc - the same mines that killed his father. But life had other plans for him. The story weaves backwards and forwards with a rich caste of characters both simple and complex, evil or kind, - there are greedy traitors, cruel psychopaths, heroes and heroines on both sides all told with detail that makes the scenes come alive. Does the silken voiced broadcaster really live in a house with 1,000 rooms? And how is he linked to The Whelk? Who is the giant Werner meets at training school who terrifies all the boys by his presence? What must Marie Laura find in ‘the house ‘ at Etienne’s - the last command her father gave her before he left for the museum? What have Captain Nemo and The young girl broadcasting on a forbidden radio have to do with the psychotic Nazi hunting relentlessly for a priceless treasure as his life ebbs away? So many questions all slowly and gradually linking up. The suspense is heightened - then comes the calm only to be jerked back onto a knife edge! We witness mindless cruelty and incredible kindness and love, and as the bombs blitz Paris under German control, then St. Malo as the Allies close in, the different threads, the pathos, the horror and yet courage, hope and survival, sometimes purely physical since minds have been lost, is so gripping, so moving I couldn't put the book down. You keep hoping that the various characters will be found - will return somehow, and the wounds, both physical and emotional will be able to heal. It's very sensively written, with characters that you feel you've shared sunny mornings and untold terrors with. A great novel to remind us all of the horror and inhumanity of war, and yet the indomitability and also the kindness that humans are capable of. A novel for baby boomers and millennials alike. Highly recommended.

153 people found this helpful

Chatterbox

Absolutely terrible!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2020

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There were only two hugely popular books that I had been disappointed in until now: Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and Atonement by Ian McEwan. I am afraid this book joins their company today! I have absolutely no idea what made it so popular and why this "masterpiece" won Pulitzer's Prize in 2015 but I really hate this book! The sad thing is that the writing is very good but the author's abysmal storytelling ruined it all for me!

The book is nearly 600 pages long. All made up of very short chapters of 2-3 pages long. Just as you start to get into the story, the next chapter takes you into a completely different time period without any warning or prelude! In places, the book unexpectedly introduces random new characters in a completely unconnected fashion (and only for one chapter of 2-3 pages!) before the story jumps again to the main characters in the following chapter.

I am not a stranger to difficult to read books or to stories made up of multiple strands and lifetimes of many characters across decades and sometimes even centuries of history but I hated this book!

The author's writing has been ruined by his inability to tell the story in a compelling way that would be coherent and enjoyable to read! Such a shame but this is one hugely disappointing read!

81 people found this helpful

Ashwini A.

An absolute must-read

Reviewed in India on 16 May 2018

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The language in the book is perhaps one of the most important bits, it is written with such rich and lively details that at times, I could almost see myself in places where Marie-Laure was or where Werner was. That was one of the most brilliant things about the book. There are many more. I think the fact that the author could transport me to that time period, make me as tense as Marie-Laure or Werner just makes me so happy?

Is happy a word to be used when talking about this book, this time period? Maybe not but the author did make me very happy. It’s very important to me that I feel connected to the characters and transported to places in the books and it did that and more.

The book jumps from time periods of Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s life, from their teen years to their younger years and back and forth. Sometimes it was a bit confusing to keep track of it, sometimes because it was an e-book, it was even frustrating to not be able to flip back to the pages I lost my thread. (An actual paperback really helps with this, it just gives me satisfaction if nothing else.)

Everything about the book made me fall in love with it. There are the usual World War II horrors and you can’t escape them, most times, I was so acutely uncomfortable with the scene but I moved ahead anyway. This book is an absolute must-read if you like reading about the World War II. Not because it’s super informative or because there’s tons of other things that could make you relate to the people of the times more. It’s more to understand how it felt for the children, for those who grew up in Germany and had to join Hitler’s army. For the children who had nobody left, those who couldn’t do much for themselves. Marie-Laure and Werner might be fictional but there were real people who were in their places at some point. They must have faced countless problems and horrors.

It is that feeling that makes me think that people should really read it.

I have a lot of wonderful things to say about it and I could say it but there’s also the one bit that I felt almost unnecessary in the book. Yes, the hunt for the Sea of Flames. The diamond. That part always felt unnecessary and almost tacked on as if it was an afterthought. I am not saying I didn’t enjoy the fantasy of it and there was a realistic part to it but at the same time, it just didn’t click with the rest of the book.

However that does not negate all the awesome things about this book and so, this remains a five-star book.

I would recommend it to anyone who loves to read World War II fiction or who wants to see how language can be elevated to this level. If you wanna read in leisure, you totally can!! This book, despite it being based during the World War II, has an almost unhurried pace to it. It’s just me who wouldn’t stop reading.

And if you still have any doubts about this book, it’s worth mentioning that it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. So, there’s that?

188 people found this helpful

Jason Cornelius

There's no doubt this is a fantastic book. Beautifully written

Reviewed in the United States on 12 May 2018

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Tough to review. There's no doubt this is a fantastic book. Beautifully written, palpable characters, fantastic backdrop. I can see why it's recieved so many accolades.
But all that said, I didn't find it enjoyable to read.
It took a while to figure out why. Even while reading it I'm thinking to myself "This is so good", but at the same time wondering why I'm bored and looking forward to the next book.
Finally I think I nailed it. Nothing really happens. It's all set in amongst the background of a lot happening, but other than hearing about it, there's not much that really goes on with the characters that so much time has been spent making us love.
This feels like all the parts of a fantastic book that happen BETWEEN the major plot points.
I spent the majority of this book waiting for something to happen, and when it doesn't it feels like there no payoff for the time invested in these characters.
Maybe this is what literary fiction is about. I can see why people may like it. It's life through the eyes of others.
But books are a form of entertainment. This wasn't entertaining to me, and I couldn't wait to start a new book.

1,449 people found this helpful

Kaffmatt

Thought Provoking Account Of The Occupation of France in WW2

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2018

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This evolved into a powerful account of the effects of WW2 on two innocent children during the occupation of France. I found the book difficult to ‘get into’ at the beginning. This was down to the author’s writing style, the short chapters and the rather confusing jumps backwards and forwards between the 1930s and 1944.
Marie Laure is an 11 yrs old blind girl, who is taken from Paris to St Malo, by her father for safety. Werner is an 11 yrs old German boy, who is a genius with technology i e old fashioned radios of the era. He attends an elite school for the German Ideal. Werner progresses to be an important part of discovering illegal radios used by the Resistance in the St Malo area.
Some very interesting facts are given and there’s obviously a lot going on; mostly about the sadness, hardship and devastating consequences of war. Paths cross along the way. Various plot threads interact. There are some heroic pleasing characters and equally some distasteful cruel individuals.
Would recommend but advise sticking with the unusual style.

57 people found this helpful

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