Anthony Doerr

Doerr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and now lives in Boise, Idaho; he studied history at Bowdoin College and creative writing at Bowling Green, building a reputation on precisely researched short fiction and essays before turning to the decade-long research project that became his best-known novel.

All the Light We Cannot See (2014) alternates between a blind French girl fleeing occupied Paris with her locksmith father's miniature model city and a German orphan whose gift for radio repair funnels him into the Wehrmacht, their paths converging during the siege of Saint-Malo; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015 after spending over a year on bestseller lists.

He has since published the novel Cloud Cuckoo Land, similarly built from years of research and interwoven timelines, confirming his reputation as one of contemporary fiction's most meticulous stylists of scientific and historical detail.