The Quaint French Town In 'All The Light We Cannot See' Is A Very Real Place

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Netflix's All The Light We Cannot See, which hit the streamer last week and is already a huge success, follows the riveting story of two teenagers living through World War II in Nazi-occupied France. The series is based off the bestselling novel of the same name by Anthony Doerr, and follows a blind, French teenager named Marie-Laure, and her relationship with Werner Pfennig, a teen from Germany.

After fleeing Paris with her father, Marie-Laure ends up in a Nazi-occupied town in coastal France, where she becomes part of a resistance network, using radio to broadcast information to Allied forces. Werner, who was pressured into military service with the Nazis, is trying to destroy radio broadcasts like the ones Marie-Laure was sending out. But after she saves his life, they become friends.

The story certainly draws on real world events and World War II, and Doerr has said that instead of "writing what he knows," as authors are often advised, he writes "what he wants to know," per The Guardian.

So, does that mean that All The Light We Cannot See is a totally true story based on real events and people? Here's everything to know about the novel-turned-Netflix series.

Is All The Light We Cannot See a true story?

No, not exactly. Anthony Doerr's original novel is a piece of historical fiction, based during World War II, which makes it inherently half-true, half-fiction.

Surprisingly, the author's original inspiration for the book was actually much more contemporary. In 2014, he told NPR that the premise of the novel came to him while riding a train. He was riding from Penn Station in New York, to Princeton, New Jersey in 2004. When the train started going underground, Doerr noticed another patron becoming frustrated with his lack of cell phone service. He got, as Doerr put it, "a little embarrassingly angry, unreasonably angry," per NPR.

The observation prompted Doerr to think about how extraordinary cell phone use is at all, and he was inspired to think about a time when "hearing the voice of a stranger in your home was a miracle," he told the station.

The historical elements of the story—specifically its setting of Europe during WWII—became part of the story long after the original concept popped into Doerr's mind.

Other parts of the story were inspired by more general research Doerr did on the time period. For example, in the story, Marie-Laure's father escapes Paris with a precious diamond from the museum he worked at. Doerr had read about Parisians boxing up precious art and artifacts prior to Nazi invasion, to keep them from being destroyed.

Is Saint-Malo a real place in France?

Yep, you can visit the town to this day. It's a port city in Brittany, which is located in the northwest corner of the country. In fact, a trip to the town was exactly what inspired Doerr to write it into his book in the first place.

While on a book tour in France, Doerr stopped in Saint-Malo, France—and decided it would be the main setting for Marie-Laure's tale. While visiting, the author was struck by how beautiful the town was, and admired its ability to rebuild after being nearly destroyed in August 1944 during World War II, per NPR.

When the Germans gained control of the small coastal town in 1944, the Allies (which included the United States) bombed the city. The Battle of Saint Malo, which lasted until September 1944, destroyed 80 percent of the city, according to Lindblad Expeditions.

After learning more about the history of the town, Doerr decided to write about it, he told NPR.

Are the protagonists based on real people?

Nope. The protagonists in All The Light We Cannot See, Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig, were not real people who lived during the war. They're pieces of fiction. And they're not inspired by real people.

In fact, despite writing about a blind character, Doerr doesn't actually know what that's like, and instead did extensive research for his characters and story, he explained on his website.

Doerr spent 10 years working on the novel, through both writing and research, per Western Reserve University. The original story premise was "a boy trapped somewhere, and a girl reading him a story on a radio," he said on his website.

You can watch All The Light We Cannot See on Netflix now.

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