Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. You know, it's always interesting to hear how different authors empathize with their characters, particularly when their characters aren't necessarily the best people. Today, we've got two authors on the pod who wrote books involving young teens during World War II. In a bit, we'll hear from the

acclaimed author Yi and Lee talking about her new book, The Book of Goose. But first, as a point of

comparison, I want to play this interview for you from 2014. It's between NPR's Arun Roth and the author

Anthony Doer, who had just written his book All the Light We Cannot See, which would eventually

win the 2015 Pulitzer for fiction. It's about a blind girl who takes refuge in rural France

during the war, and a boy who becomes a Nazi. And in this interview, Doer says something

interesting about evil and how it works and how it's not something that happens in an instant,

but is instead a matter of degrees.

Is there anything left to say about World War II?

There are so many books written about the war.

Supposedly if you drop them on Germany, it would cover the whole country.

I'm not sure if that's true.

But I thought, you know, why do I need to add one more?

And for me, I just thought I would try to dwell very specifically on these two children as they move through the war.

That's writer Anthony Dorr, and the children he's talking about are the protagonists in his new novel, All the Light We Cannot See.

Door is exploring familiar history through unfamiliar perspectives, hoping you can see the world from

the viewpoint of these two children.

He admits that was a challenge for one of them, a young boy named Werner, who becomes a

Nazi.

I asked Dora to talk first about Werner's counterpart, the French girl Marie.

She's a sightless girl.

She loses her sight at the age of six. Her father works

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