PB Book ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE A Novel By Anthony Doerr Pulitzer Prize 2014

Minor shelfwear to cover

Clean pages

Vertical crease to spine

All the Light We Cannot See A Novel By Anthony Doerr

Pulitzer Prize

Trade PB

Export edition 2014.

All the Light We Cannot See is a war novel written by American author Anthony Doerr

published by Scribner on May 6, 2014

It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Set in occupied France during World War II, the novel centers on a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths eventually cross.

Plot

In 1934, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a six-year-old blind girl living in Paris with her father, the master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. She hears stories of the purported Sea of Flames hidden within the museum, which is said to grant immortality at the cost of endless misfortune to those around the owner. Allegedly, the only way to end the curse is to return the stone to the ocean, its rightful owner. In Germany, 8-year-old Werner Pfennig is an orphan in the coal-mining town of Zollverein. Werner is exceptionally bright and has a natural skill for repairing radios and after he finds a broken one with his sister Jutta, he fixes it and he uses it to hear science and music programs transmitted across Europe.

When Germany invades France in 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee to the coastal town of Saint-Malo to take refuge with her great-uncle Etienne, a recluse and shellshocked veteran of the Great War who spent his time broadcasting old records of his dead brother across Europe. Unknown to Marie-Laure, her father had been entrusted by the museum with either the Sea of Flames or one of three exact copies, made to protect the original gem. Months later, while building a model town of Saint-Malo for Marie-Laure, Marie-Laure's father is arrested. He is not heard from again, leaving Marie-Laure alone with Etienne and Madame Manec, Etienne's longtime maid and housekeeper. Meanwhile, a Nazi gemologist, Reinhold von Rumpel, begins to search for the Sea of Flames, seeking its purported immortality, to save himself from dying an untimely death due to his spreading cancer. He locates each of the three forgeries, and sets his sights on Saint-Malo.

Werner's skill earns him a place at the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta, a draconian state boarding school teaching Nazi values. Werner is obedient and highly efficient in technical work. He begins work on radio technology and is soon placed in the Wehrmacht, tracking illegal enemy signals alongside Volkheimer, a large yet gentle soldier from Schulpforta. Werner becomes increasingly disillusioned with his position, especially after an innocent young girl is killed by his group after incorrectly tracing a signal.

Meanwhile, Madame Manec participates in the Resistance along with other local women. These activities have some success, but Madame Manec becomes ill and dies. Marie-Laure and Etienne continue her efforts, transmitting secret messages alongside piano recordings and important Morse code information. Etienne's signal is traced, and Werner's group is told to track the broadcast. Werner tracks it to Etienne's house, but recognizes the source as the one who broadcast the science programs he listened to at the orphanage, and does not disclose its location. Etienne is arrested for other reasons, leaving Marie-Laure alone, who continues the broadcasts.

As the Allied forces lay siege to Saint-Malo, Werner is trapped beneath a pile of rubble, where he stays alive without food or water for days just by listening to Marie-Laure's radio broadcasts in which she reads from her Jules Verne novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which was in Braille. At around the same time, Marie-Laure opens the model of Etienne's house and finds the diamond.

After being trapped for several days, Werner escapes and heads for Etienne's house, in pursuit of Marie-Laure as well as "the Frenchman” whose broadcasts had filled his bleak childhood with hope. There he finds von Rumpel in pursuit of the jewel. After a brief standoff, he kills von Rumpel and meets Marie-Laure, who had hidden in the attic to protect herself and the stone. Although only together for a short time, they form a strong bond, and Werner finds himself falling in love with her. As they flee from Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure places the Sea of Flames inside a gated grotto flooded with seawater from the tide, thereby returning it to the ocean. She gives the key to Werner, who sends her away into safety but is captured himself and sent to an American disarmament center where he becomes gravely ill. Just as he begins to recover, he accidentally steps on a German landmine at night in a fit of delirium and is immediately killed.

Thirty years later, Volkheimer finds Jutta and gives her Werner's belongings at the time of his death, including the model house which contained the Sea of Flames and tells her that possibly Werner had been in love. Jutta travels to France with her son Max, where she meets Marie-Laure in Paris, now working as a marine biologist at the Museum of Natural History. Marie-Laure opens the model and finds the key to the grotto. The story ends in 2014 with Marie-Laure, now 86 years old, walking with her grandson, Michel in the streets of Paris where she grew up.

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Coloured illustrations

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