Award-winning novel "All the Light We Cannot See," by Anthony Doerr, will be highlighted this week as part of the Open Book Series.
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2015 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, "All the Light We Cannot See" is a novel unlike any other that follows the intersecting lives of a blind French girl and a German soldier during World War II.
A talk by professor Tony Jarrell about the book will be held in the Hollings Special Collections Library on Monday at 6 p.m. To follow this talk, Doerr will lead a discussion about the book Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Law School Auditorium.
In addition to this book, Doerr is the author of story collections and a memoir. His work has earned four O. Henry Prizes and won various awards around the world. One of his collections of short stories won the most prestigious short story prize in the U.S. in 2010, the Story Prize.
Doerr's style in "All the Light We Cannot See" hosts a balance between imagination and observation, with characters' lives interwoven cleverly to bring out his ultimate theme of people trying to be good to one another despite all else.
The Open Book Series is hosted by the English Department and allows students to hear directly from authors on the writing process. This upcoming week is the third of the series. There will be novels from different authors focused on each week until the end of the Open Book Series on April 20. Other authors in the 2016 series are Nuruddin Farah, Jenny Offill, Celeste Ng, Paul Auster and Elise Blackwell.