All the Light There Was: A Novel

By Nancy Kricorian

On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris, where, like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, her parents have come to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well—but Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friends Zaven and Barkev are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors.

When Zaven and Barkev flee to avoid conscription, Maral finally realizes that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured—and when only one brother returns after many fraught months, the contours of Maral’s world are changed irrevocably.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Oct 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631529061

Nancy Kricorian

Nancy Kricorian, author of the novels Zabelle and Dreams of Bread and Fire, is a widely published poet, essayist, and activist. After graduating from Dartmouth, Nancy studied and worked in Paris before earning an MFA in writing at Columbia University.

Reviews for All the Light There Was

[seeword · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All the Light There Was; Kricorian, NancyThis suffers because of its similarity in title and subject with Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. This is also set in Paris during the Nazi Occupation and it also is about a young girl. End of similarities. This story is about an Armenian family, the parents are refugees from the Armenian Genocide. The book is much less complicated than the Doerr book. Its straightforward telling is like a grandparent might talk to young family members. "How I met your grandfather during the war." Its really a YA novel and as such it is a good introduction to how life goes on in difficult times. I received a finished copy from author through a Goodreads giveaway.

[literaryrunner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Told from the voice of a teenaged Armenia whose family lives in Paris during the Nazi occupation, this subtle novel is more about the emergence and maturing of love than actually World War II. Nicely written, the family intimacies and struggles are highlighted through the slow starvation of its members. The perils of resistance workers and the deportation of the French Jews play a minor role in how these events affect the author and her family. I enjoyed the novel but was a bit less moved and involved than I had hoped.