All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

I savoured each short chapter of an unusual war story. There's courage, comradeship and morality, an exciting tale of a missing jewel and those who seek or skilfully conceal it. But there's more. The wonder of the senses felt by a blind French girl, sounds scents, most of all touch. The wonder and terror of radio that bridges the world and inevitably draws the German boy to her. What happens? I wanted to know but didn't want it to end.

Extract
One night Werner and Jutta tune in to a scratchy broadcast in which a young man is talking in a feathery French accent about light.
'The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children,' says the voice. 'It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. and yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?'
Parallels
  • The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
  • The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr