7 Must-Read Books for All the Light We Cannot See Fans

By the time she reached the age of 6, Marie-Laure had gone blind. Her father, a locksmith at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, has helped steer his daughter through the world by creating a miniature versions of their home, their neighborhood, and its surroundings. Theirs is a relationship all families long for, and only some achieve—until the war comes crashing down around their cosseted bubble of security.
Meanwhile in Germany, young Werner has grown up an orphan, kept tethered to the world by tinkering and his love of the radio. These talents, and these passions, will see him through dark days as a member of the Hitler Youth, and, he thinks, will help keep his younger sister safe. Though he has grown up with nothing so outwardly precious as Marie-Laure, the war takes from him as well.
When the paths of Werner and Marie-Laure converge, we fully realize the cost of conflict in a way that can often be difficult to show in a textbook. We also see the genuine humanity that bubbles up in even the darkest of hours. But All the Light We Cannot See doesn’t have a monopoly on humanizing the inhuman, the massively incalculable. Here are a few other titles that take up the lives lost and altered by WWII.

Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly
In the same vein as Doerr’s award winner, Kelly’s story shows the war from disparate points of view. The plot unfolds through the eyes of three women: a New York socialite working at the French consulate; a Polish teenager running information for the resistance movement; and a German doctor whose career path will be marked by concentration camps and the Holocaust’s atrocities. As their tales close in on each other, it’s not an easy read, but it is a meaningful one.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
As a culture, we can a bit liberal with bestowing the To Kill a Mockingbird mantle on modern books. There are many great books, deserving of your love and affection, but The Book Thief may come closest to the feel of Harper Lee’s masterwork, to its level of inspiration and heartbreak. Perhaps that’s an odd thing to say of a book narrated by Death, but young Liesel Meminger’s odyssey of stealing books she encounters begins as a way to insulate herself from the horrors of wartime Germany and ends as something much greater: a buoy for those around her as the bombs rain down, and a beacon for the existence of better days ahead.

The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah
We understand the horrors of WWII (and of war in general), but we often focus on the immense loss felt by the fighting forces along the front lines. Hannah shines a spotlight on the experience in this conflict of its women by bringing to life Vianne, who must take an enemy soldier into her home during Germany’s occupation of France. All at once, nothing in her life is safe, and she is forced into a series of progressively awful choices for the security of her family. At the same time, Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, embarks on, first, a tempestuous love affair and, then, a new purpose: as a member of the French resistance.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
Suite Francaise paints a more robust picture of the French occupation, giving voice to people throughout the nation and honing the sense of fear, hopelessness, self-preservation, and, finally, hope once more. But the story of how the book came to be is the most important one of all: Nemirovsky was a successful Jewish writer living in Paris in 1942, when she was sent to Auschwitz, where she would die before the war’s end. The manuscript for this novel was recovered 64 years later, and tells the important story its author did not have a chance to finish.

Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada
In a similar vein, but in the opposite country, Fallada’s true-to-life story of a German couple’s resistance of the Nazis has a heartbreaking backstory of its own. Before the war, Fallada was a successful German writer. He, however, resisted the Third Reich’s edict that he write an anti-semitic novel. He survived the war, but not unscathed, having been spent a large portion of it imprisoned in an asylum. One of his last works before his death in 1947 was the publication of this story based on the file of a real couple.

The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell
Though we often focus on the victims, for there were multitudes, it can be important to unmask the aggressors of WWII as well. In this fictional memoir of a former Nazi officer, we bear witness to the monstrousness of the Nazi regime’s intellectual classes. Its publication was controversial, and its length is tome-ish in nature, but this meditation on the capacity for evil is sweeping in nature and engrossing in its scope.

A Hero of France, by Alan Furst
The elements of intrigue—namely, the secret valuable Marie-Laure unknowingly holds the key to—are no small part of All the Light We Cannot See’s forward propulsion. Furst is a prolific espionage novelist, and A Hero of France takes place among the defiant streets of 1941 Paris, where Mathieu helps lead the resistance movement. Threats and allies both accumulate in droves, as does the wheeling, dealing, and political maneuvering. The suspense never stops, as long as the larger battle rages on.
What books would you recommend to readers who loved All the Light We Cannot See?