Is Netflix’s ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ based on a true story?

Buzz is building around Netflix’s new four-part drama series All The Light We Cannot See, which drops on Nov. 2. Boasting a star-studded cast including Aria Mia Loberti in her debut role, House star Hugh Laurie, triple Academy Award nominee Mark Ruffalo, and up-and-coming German actor Louis Hofmann, the series is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr. But is the World War Two drama based on a true story, or not?

A neglected part of World War Two’s history

In fact, All The Light We Cannot See is fictional, though the backdrop for the story is entirely real. The Battle of St Malo was fought in August 1944, less than a month after Allied forces broke out from their bridgehead on Normandy’s beaches. Concerned about a flank attack on their armies as they pushed eastwards towards Germany, a group of American, British, and Free French units were detached to head west into Brittany instead. The port town of St Malo had been heavily fortified by the Germans, and a siege was imposed. Doerr situates the action in the town itself during the siege, with Loberti and Hofmann playing a blind French girl and a young German boy pressed into service against his will, as the Nazi manpower shortage began to bite. The trailer, which dropped in the spring, speaks to a lavish production with a big budget, and has already garnered in excess of five million views of YouTube. If it lives up to the hype, All The Light We Cannot See will be worth watching.