Anthony Doerr is an author from Boise, Idaho. He previously wrote the short story collection The Shell Collector (2002) and the novel About Grace (2004).[2][3] The memoir Four Seasons in Rome (2007) and the short story collection Memory Wall (2010) were released while All the Light We Cannot See was being written.[4] Doerr has garnered several awards throughout his writing career, including four O. Henry Awards.[5][6] Doerr has a fascination with science. This interest originated from his youth in Cleveland, Ohio, particularly his mother's teachings and their travels into the country.[7] This fascination has influenced Doerr's works, including All the Light We Cannot See.[7][8]
Doerr drew inspiration for All the Light We Cannot See during a 2004 train ride to meet with his publisher. When the train passed through a tunnel, a passenger became frustrated when his telephone call disconnected. Doerr thought the passenger did not appreciate the "miracle" of long-distance communication. He conceptualized a story set in a time when this would be considered a miracle.[9][10][11] After the event, he wrote "All the Light We Cannot See" in a notebook.[12] At the time, his only idea for the book was a scene of a girl reading to a boy over the radio.[9]
During a 2005 trip to France, Doerr visited Saint-Malo to promote After Grace. U.S. forces nearly destroyed Saint-Malo during World War II, leading to it requiring a lengthy reconstruction after the war.[7][9][13]: 6:54–7:18 Doerr became interested in how, in his words, "a place could so thoroughly hide its own incineration": that the city felt ancient to him, in spite of its destruction near the end of World War II. The visit led to him setting the novel in World War II.[14] He formulated his scene to have the boy trapped somewhere in Saint-Malo and listening to the girl reading Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea over the radio.[13]: 7:19–7:36
Doerr wanted to tell an original story set in World War II. According to him, many of the war stories he had read portrayed the French resistance as charismatic heroes and the Nazis as evil torturers.[14] Doerr wanted to highlight the civilians involved in the war from both sides, forced into making morally ambiguous decisions.[7] To accomplish this, Doerr wrote the German narrative to feature a person tragically involved in Nazism and wrote the French narrative to feature a talented disabled person.[14] To balance the sympathetic portrayal of a Nazi, however, Doerr wrote Reinhold von Rumpel as the evil Nazi archetype, which he believed readers would be more familiar with.[12] In addition to highlighting the civilians, Doerr also wanted to convey the abundance of miracles that can appear, even during war.[7]
The novel took ten years to write, most of which he spent on research.[7][4] Doerr read diaries and letters written during World War II and visited Germany, Paris, and Saint-Malo for further study.[2] His inability to speak French or German hindered his research, forcing him to use Google Translate. Despite this, his research allowed Doerr to add historical details to his narrative, including speech transcripts and the names of German radio manufacturers.[11][4] Doerr considered writing All the Light We Cannot See to be "fun and super frustrating all at once."[11] Doerr intentionally wrote short chapters to keep the novel accessible because of the lyrical style.[11][15] He wrote over a hundred short chapters that alternated between perspectives, a process he likened to building a model house.[11] The beginning, middle, and ending were written simultaneously.[7]
