It shows that terror can only be a background for another story written in short chapters and that describes human nature and its power to see the light in places where it seems to disappear.

The story takes place some years before and then during World War II in two locations: occupied France and Hitler’s Germany. There is an orphan boy in Germany and a blind girl living in the heart of Paris. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is the only precious daughter of her father, a master locksmith who works at the museum. She lost her sight at the age of six, but her widowed father never hints that her condition is a defect. By creating wooden models of her street, taking her to her job, going with her to different places, and supervising her to develop her sense of touch, he teaches her how to get by in a whole new world without pictures. The man goes further: he buys expensive Braille books to enhance Marie’s perception of a fantastical world explored by Jules Verne. And throughout the entire story, we never noticed a hint of the girls’ complaints. Things and objects, people and nature that she cannot see for obvious reasons, Marie imagines and knows through sounds and smells.

At the same time, the neighboring country is preparing for war. Eight-year-old Werner Pfennig lives in the Zollverein Children’s Home with his sister and a few other children without parents or a bright future. Unlike other townspeople, he and his sister Jutta don’t care about Nazism. What they really do is listen to the radio and learn incredible things from the programs broadcast by an unknown Frenchman with a low and tender voice.

Their lives change when the Nazis arrive in France in 1940. Marie and her father leave their home and a comfortable apartment to come to the land of Marie’s uncle, Etienne, who after a while becomes the best friend and support of the girl when her father disappears. There’s something he left behind on one of Marie’s models. There is something precious that she has had all along, and for which a Nazi von Rumpel gemologist will come.

A talented German boy joins other extraordinary white-haired, blue-eyed teenagers in a nightmare school for the country’s military. He seems as if he got what he wanted: he shows talent and even though he has no money, he is accepted, trained and respected. But not for Jutta… She seems to have more light and hers is bright enough to see how quickly her beloved brother has become one of those who put their father and the parents of thousands of other orphans to work for. live coal mining.

Over the years, Marie-Laure lives her own life with her extraordinary uncle, discovers his secret hidden in the attic, and joins the group of French guerillas working for the benefit of France. As the girl continues to grow the light that she carries within her, Werner loses more of his day after day. In the background, there is the voice that tells him that things are not what they should be: prisoners are not to be humiliated and left out in the cold to die, classmates are not to be hunted down and beaten to death, kill to others it is not what their nation must do to prove its superiority. But the voice stays low for years. Werner is sent to the war and does his job not only repairing radios in the occupied lands. He watches others die and does nothing to save them. Deep within him, there is still the light that he cannot see. And every reader knows that one day Werner will make it brighter.

While searching for guerrillas, he comes across the same voice he heard at the Children’s Home in Zollverein. Werner goes against his comrades and never reveals the secret until he hears a girl’s voice calling for help…

Although one can find dozens of books on World War II written by modern authors, there is hardly a novel like it. There are several settings and an extraordinary way of writing: the chapters are short and the action takes place both in the past and in the present. A reader starts with the final scenes and then goes back to the beginning to learn how it happened and what events led to this outcome. Anthony Doerr uses magnificent metaphors and has a keen sense of physical details that help him show passionate readers in all corners of the world that even in dire situations and times, there are still people who hold the brightest inner light and try to be good to one another even if they are in different fields.