Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See"

Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See" - 2014

The last couple of years, I have read the latest Pulitzer Prize winner and have usually been very happy with them. So, I had to read this one, as well. And it has not disappointed me.

Anthony Doerr managed to write a different kind of war story, a story about the little people, on either side of the war, those that had not much to say about what was happening to them and who paid the highest price. He tells the story of a German orphan boy and a blind French girl who both suffer from what happened, who were probably not even in school when the election in Germany decided about their fate and who had to pay the highest price.

The story is fascinating, the writing is careful yet beautiful, the characters are described in a loving way. This is one of the books that you would like to read as slow as possible because you hope it will never end. Because, even though you hope for a good ending, you fear for a bad one.

I wish there would be more books written like this because it might teach the people of today what it might have been like to live in Germany during that time, that not all Germans were Nazis and that even those who were often had no choice.

A brilliant book that I would recommend to anyone.

Anthony Doerr received the Pulitzer Prize for "All the Light We Cannot See" in 2016.

From the back cover:

"The epic new novel, set during WW2, from Sunday Times Short Story Prize-winner Anthony Doerr.
Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret.

Werner Pfennig is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father’s life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering.

At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in. And yet, it will not allow him to remain shut in forever

Doerr’s combination of soaring imagination and meticulous observation is electric. As Europe is engulfed by war and lives collide unpredictably, ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ is a captivating and devastating elegy for innocence and of how, against all odds, people try to be good to one another."

There were also a few books mentioned/read in the book.
Darwin, Charles "The Voyage of the 'Beagle'"
Hertz, Heinrich "The Principles of Mechanics"
Verne, Jules "Around the World in Eighty Days"
Verne, Jules "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"