All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr (2014)
“A blind French girl and a German orphan find each other across the rubble of WWII — and Doerr asks whether goodness can survive a world determined to destroy it.”
Short Summary
Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind twelve-year-old in Paris, flees with her father to Saint-Malo when Germany invades in 1940. Werner Pfennig, an orphaned German boy in the Ruhr, escapes the coal mines through a genius for radios that lands him at a brutal Nazi school and eventually on the Western Front. Their paths converge in Saint-Malo in August 1944, when the city burns and a fanatical SS sergeant hunts a legendary diamond. They meet once, briefly, and it is enough.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens and closes in August 1944, during the Allied bombardment of Saint-Malo, Brittany. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is eighteen and blind, hiding in her great-uncle Etienne's attic with a model of the city, a radio transmitter, and a diamond that may or may not be cursed. Werner Pfennig is eightee...