Subscribe to our newsletter
National Book Foundation > Author > Anthony Doerr
Anthony Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Alex Award, and a Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. (Photo credit: Ulf Andersen) More about this author >
Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. More about this book >
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. More about this book >
Anthony Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Alex Award, and a Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. He is also the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector; the novel About Grace; and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five PEN/O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and The Story Prize. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.
(Photo credit: Ulf Andersen)