All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

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?

below. And yet by early autumn, once or twice a week, at certain moments of the day, sitting out in the Jardin des Plantes beneath the massive hedges or reading beside her father’s workbench, Marie-Laure looks up from her book and believes she can smell gasoline under the wind. As if a great river of machinery is steaming slowly, irrevocably, toward

Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God. And when God stops whispering, they become desperate for someone who can put things right.

red carpet sucks at the soles of Werner’s brogues; electric bulbs burn in a chandelier above the table; roses twine across the wallpaper. A fire smolders in the fireplace. On all four walls hang framed tintypes of glowering ancestors. Is this where they arrest boys whose sisters listen to foreign radio stations?

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”

He tries to listen above the rush of blood in his ears. No dogs, no torches. Probably the farmers too have fled. He sets Marie-Laure in front of the barn doors and knocks softly and waits and knocks again. The padlock is a brand-new single-latch Burguet; with his tools he picks it easily. Inside are oats and water

Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.

a hundred more things she cannot identify. He has the entire fifth floor—one big room, except for the landing—to

du wirst schon sehen,”

“Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.”

à la pomme de terre, je suis par terre; au haricot, je suis dans l’eau

“You boys would not believe what a creature this is. What a foul beast, a centaur, an Untermensch.”

Werner is succeeding. He is being loyal. He is being what everybody agrees is good. And yet every time he wakes and buttons his tunic, he feels he is betraying something.

that comes all the way from Russia, a Cossack wind, the wind of candle-eating barbarians with hogs’ heads who will stop at nothing to drink the blood of German girls. Gorillas who must be wiped off the earth.

Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.

“Isn’t doing nothing a kind of troublemaking?”

“Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.”

vision of his father’s last

the refectory tables, ablaze with slogans. They say, Disgrace is not to fall but to lie. They

the passage of the two officers as they move between tables, seeking out

He raises one short arm and the boys turn on their heels, raise their rifles above their heads, and run faster

Gott mit uns

Before they leave, he asks the frau to bring a dozen hard-boiled eggs and hands Werner four. From Schulpforta they ride a train through Leipzig and disembark at a switching

sinister Ukrainian static that seems to have been here long before humans figured out how to hear it. Volkheimer clambers out of the truck and lowers his trousers and pees into the flowers and Werner decides to

headphones against his ears. Again it comes: Ponye-something-feshky,

the Opel roars into gear. Stones Sergeant Major von

since completing his treatments in Stuttgart,

Ordnung muss sein.

Volkheimer who always makes sure there is food for Werner. Who brings him eggs, who shares his broth, whose fondness for Werner remains, it seems, unshakable.

So really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.

Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

a hallucination,

line,” the corporal

The sound makes him jerk backward, and he knocks his head on the top of the wardrobe, and the candle falls, and von Rumpel lands on his back. He watches the

shadows of the girls’ dormitory and dreams of light thickening

says contains her grandfather’s voice, lessons in science for children. And the books! The lower floors