Now, with the threat of German occupation looming right over Paris’s head, the museum curator sends off 4 versions of the diamond (3 fakes and 1 that’s the real thing) across the country one of these ends up in the hands of Marie-Laure and her father as they travel cross-country to find sanctuary in Saint-Malo, a port city in Brittany, France. Daniel works as a key-maker for the Paris Natural History Museum, which is home to the infamous ‘Sea of Flames’– a diamond of invaluable proportions tucked away from public view due to wild rumors of a curse brought upon it by the Goddess of the Earth. One of the main characters is a blind girl named Marie-Laure, who lives with her father, Daniel LeBlanc, in Paris. However, for our purposes, I’ll just give a quick summary of the Sea of Flames and its role in the novel. The ‘Sea of Flames’ Fictional Infamy (First: A Quick Summary)įor anyone unfamiliar with All the Light We Cannot See, I read a review by NPR which, while critical of the story’s non-linear format (which I, for one, loved), includes a lovely summary that I believe describes the novel really well! I definitely recommend looking at it if you’re interested in the novel as a whole. Another name for the gem is ‘The Cursed Amethyst’ and for the purposes of this article I will continue to refer to it as the amethyst, for the sake of accuracy. *Sidenote: the “sapphire” is actually an amethyst! It was misidentified by a British soldier who looted the gemstone from the Temple of Indra in Kanpur, during political turmoil between the Indians and the colonizing British (More on this later). This gem laid the foundation for Doerr’s own cursed diamond: the fated ‘Sea of Flames’ which drives the plot of the novel (and makes a pretty good story, in real life AND in between pages). While doing research, Doerr stumbled upon the Delhi Sapphire *, a gemstone being held at the Natural History Museum in London, which had a particularly turbulent history– including multiple accusations that it was cursed. American Booksellers Association, April 2014.

Sapphire flames