Recommended Reads: Second World War Novels

1) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Marry Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Have you ever found yourself picking up a book with a title so weird you have to wonder what yourself into? Cut to 1am, and your making yourself a tea determined to finish this amazing book before you sleep? And then, once you have finished it, recommended it to anyone and everyone around you? That was my experience reading this gem of a book.

This story in letters is actually set just after the close of the second world war. Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man called Dawsey Adams asking for information regarding a certain author. Thus begins an unlikely network of friendships, and a story that encompasses everything from novels to life under German Occupation to life and love and friendship.

If you haven't read this book, add it to your list. Then make it your priority.

2) The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak

I'll admit, I was late to the game with this one, reading it for the first time last year. I hadn't watched the movie, so I went into it knowing only that it came highly recommended. It did not take me long to be enthralled.

Zusak's prose is so beautifully written, it reads more like poetry. And in this breathtaking manner, Death tells is the story of a family struggling to retrain their humanity and compassion in Nazi Germany, even as doing so puts them in a precarious and deadly position. This is a book that both celebrates and warns against the power of words, showing love, friendship and loyalty in all its beauty and pain.

If you haven't read this book: do. That's all I can say.

3) All the Light We Can Not by Anthony Doerr

The last book on the list, this is also my most recent find. This novel is the beautifully told story of the intersecting lives of a young Nazi officer and a blind French girl. It is a novel that explores the darkness of the Nazi regime, as well as the light pushing back against it, fighting to make itself seen.

I have less to say about this novel, simply because it is so new to me. I have not been able to re-read it as I have the others. Still, the journey it took me on was filled with turbulent, human emotions of pain and hope. And it did not take very long for me to be invested in the lives of the characters.

If you see this on a shelf, do not walk past it, as I so nearly did. Instead, pick it up see through the eyes of a blind girl.