A diamond that is worth five Eiffel Towers. But you need to think twice before accepting it as a gift since it will bring misfortune to the people surrounding you. Even if you accept, you need to have the courage of returning to its rightful owner as was done by Marie Laure the sixteen year old blind girl in the story. You need to read the novel in order to understand who is the rightful owner and the name of that diamond.
We are witnessing a sharp divide between nations currently and there is a lack of trust between the nations. Russia and Ukraine are already at war with West getting involved by indirect means. If our nation has to go to war of large scale, what would be our situation as civilians of this country. The story of this novel unfolds during the Second World War and depicts the war as experienced by the central characters of the book. The events explained in the book will give us an idea of what could happen to us in the eventuality of a war. This is one more reason to read the book.
The story revolves around two main characters. Marie Laure is a blind girl who lives in Paris with her father who works at the National History Museum. The other character is a teenage boy named Werner Pfennig who lives in Zollverein a town in Germany along with his sister. They are orphans and spend their childhood in an orphanage center. The story of Marie and Werner is told in parallel (Alternate chapters dedicated to Marie or Werner).
The story is also told in back and forth style. The part zero is on what happens on 7th August 1944 and the part one goes back to 1934 and the part two again takes us to 8th August 1944. Like this there are thirteen parts in total with each part focusing on a particular period.
The story has also lots of quotes that are worth taking note of. Like “Open your eyes and see what you can before they close forever”. Or “Science my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth”.
And the language used in this book is very lyrical in nature. You may find it difficult to understand certain words and may have to refer to dictionary. Also you maybe forced to read a chapter multiple times in order to understand the flow. It took more than 10 years for the author Anthony Doerr to complete the novel. He had to research a lot before writing this book. The book was released in 2014 and it is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2015.
So, if you want to experience a unique style of story telling, grab this book and read it. And you will enjoy it for sure.
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