He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio,[1] Doerr attended the nearby University School, graduating in 1991.

Doerr's second novel, All the Light We Cannot See, is set in occupied France during World War II and was published in 2014.

[6] Doerr writes a column on science books for The Boston Globe and is a contributor to The Morning News, an online magazine.

[7][8] Doerr's third novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, follows three story lines, scattered throughout time: 13-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril.