'Far more than a conventional war story, it's a tightly focused epic revolving around two unusual main characters … Doerr paints with a rich palette, using prose that resonates deeply and conveys the ephemera of daily existence along with high drama, sadness and hope … A bittersweet and moving novel that lingers in the mind' Clifford Beal, Daily Mail

‘This novel will be a piece of luck for anyone with a long plane journey or beach holiday ahead. It is such a page-turner, entirely absorbing… [Doerr’s] attention to detail is magnificent’ Guardian

‘It is easy to understand why Doerr’s book is regarded by many as an epic and a masterpiece’ Observer

‘He can bring a scene to life in a single paragraph … Delicate and moving … the novel takes hold and will not easily let go’ The Times

‘Boy meets girl in Anthony Doerr’s hauntingly beautiful new book, but the circumstances are as elegantly circuitous as they can be’ New York Times

‘I’m not sure I will read a better novel this year … Enthrallingly told, beautifully written and so emotionally plangent that some passages bring tears’ Washington Post

‘This jewel of a story is put together like a vintage timepiece … Doerr’s writing and imagery are stunning. It’s been a while since a novel had me under its spell in this fashion’ Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

‘A dazzling, epic work of fiction. Anthony Doerr writes beautifully about the mythic and the intimate, about snails on beaches and armies on the move, about fate and love and history and those breathless, unbearable moments when they all come crashing together’ Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

Anthony Doerr is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
All the Light We Cannot See. He is also the author of two story collections, Memory Wall and The Shell Collector; the novel About Grace; and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.