How All The Light We Cannot See came to be written

By Anthony Doerr    |   Thursday, November 20, 2014 - Off the Shelf Today, we're happy to bring you something written by Anthony Doerr which you'll find at the newly-launched Scribner Magazine website. Mr. Doerr is also the author of MEMORY WALL and FOUR SEASONS IN ROME. I first saw Saint-Malo while I was on book tour in France. It’s a ghostly, imperious walled city in Brittany, surrounded by emerald green sea on all four sides. It was night, and after dinner I went for a stroll on top of the ramparts, peering into the third-floor windows of houses, the low-tide beaches glimmering in moonlight, the town glowing. I felt as if I was walking through a city plucked from the imagination of Italo Calvino, a place that was part fairy-tale castle, part M. C. Escher drawing, part mist and ocean wind and lamplight. More