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A young man trapped in darkness listens to a girl’s voice over the radio. This is the first scene author Anthony Doerr imagined, in what became his book “All the Light We Cannot See.� The novel flips between the stories of two young people grappling with the events of World War II: a curious, blind French girl, and a German boy with a talent for working with radios. Eventually, their stories weave together. The novel took Doerr a decade to research and write, and he was not expecting it to be widely read� but it was a breakout literary hit of 2014. For this month’s Readers� Review: “All the Light We Cannot See.�



Guests

Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air. Her latest book is titled, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures.

Leslie Maitland, former reporter for The New York Times; author of Crossing the Borders of Time: A True Story of War, Exile, and Love Reclaimed.

Boris Fishman, novelist, author of A Replacement Life. His journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and more.

'All The Light' Prize-Winning Author Anthony Doerr Can Now See



With guest host Jane Clayson

Anthony Doerr just won the Pulitzer Prize for his bestselling book “All the Light We Cannot See.� He joins us.

Writer Anthony Doerr just won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “All the Light We Cannot See.� It’s a story about World War II, about a German boy with a gift for repairing radios, and a blind French girl whose father was the locksmith at the Natural History Museum in Paris. It seems an unlikely outline for a bestselling novel, but the book has spent 51 weeks on the New York Times� bestseller list. And seems to be continuing to pick up momentum as more people read it and rave about it. This hour, On Point: Anthony Doerr on his book, “All the Light We Cannot See.�

Guest

Anthony Doerr, novelist and author. Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, All the Light We Cannot See. Also author of Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World and About Grace, among others.

From The Reading List

Washington Post: ‘All the Light We Cannot See,� by Anthony Doerr � “I’m not sure I will read a better novel this year than Anthony ­Doerr’s ‘All the Light We Cannot See.� Enthrallingly told, beautifully written and so emotionally plangent that some passages bring tears, it is completely unsentimental � no mean trick when you consider that Doerr’s two protagonists are children who have been engulfed in the horror of World War II.�



New York Times: Literary Jackpot, Against the Odds � “In a year jammed with juicy novels from literary heavyweights like David Mitchell and Marilynne Robinson, Mr. Doerr’s book has emerged as the unexpected breakout fiction best seller of 2014. The story, about a blind French girl who joins the resistance to the German occupation and a sharp young German soldier with a savant-like talent for tracking radio signals, has struck a chord with readers, catching everyone in the book industry, including Mr. Doerr and his publisher, by surprise.�



The Guardian: Anthony Doerr: ‘I grew up where to call yourself a writer would be pretentious� � “It was Anthony Doerr’s wife Shauna who saw the news first. She was the one who was secretly streaming the Pulitzer ceremonies on YouTube in another room of their Paris apartment. He was in the kitchen with their son Owen, eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. She came in shaking and the phone started ringing, because he’d just won the Big Kahuna of American literary prizes: the Pulitzer for fiction.�

This program is being rebroadcast this morning on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show.



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