The Poetry of Collision: Parallel Arcs in ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ and ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’

There’s something incredibly moving about stories that begin with two characters who seem to live in different worlds and then slowly, inevitably, bring those characters together. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns both follow this pattern, though their settings could not be more different- war-torn Europe in the 1940s versus war-torn Afghanistan in the late twentieth century. Still, the emotional effect is similar: we watch two parallel lives, we feel their struggles in isolation, and when they finally collide, it feels like the story has been holding its breath the entire time.

What makes the alternating arcs in All the Light We Cannot See and in A Thousand Splendid Suns feel different from a lot of other stories is the sense of uncertainty and two entirely different experiences lived by people in the same political and societal landscape. In books like Rick Riordan’s, when the point of view shifts between characters, they’re usually chasing the same goal, are a part of a team and are simply different perspectives of the same continuous story. With Doerr or Hosseini, the arcs are separate, almost self-contained, and the characters aren’t even aware of each other’s existence for most of the novel. That means much of the mystery lies in the interconnection of the two lives, not just in the progression of their journey.

In Doerr’s novel, the split arc is between Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a gifted German boy drawn into the Nazi army. Their stories alternate in short, often fragmentary chapters. At first, the switch between them can be jarring; you’re just sinking into one life when the page ends, and suddenly you’re in another. But as the novel progresses, the rhythm of that back-and-forth becomes the heartbeat of the book. It’s like two melodies being played separately that eventually resolve into harmony. By the time Marie-Laure and Werner finally meet in Saint-Malo, the connection feels inevitable, even fated.

Hosseini uses a similar structure in A Thousand Splendid Suns. The first half of the book belongs to Mariam, an illegitimate daughter in Herat who grows up under the shadow of shame and eventually becomes the wife of the abusive Rasheed. Then the narrative shifts to Laila, a bright, beloved girl from Kabul whose life is shattered by war. For a while, their arcs feel entirely separate stories; two Afghan women born into different circumstances, living different lives. But Hosseini keeps alternating between them, slowly building tension, until their paths converge when Laila is forced into Rasheed’s household as a second wife. The collision of their arcs is brutal but also transformative. The story changes shape at that moment: what had been two individual struggles becomes a joint resistance, a shared endurance.

What both books capture so well is the power of anticipation. As readers, we know from the structure alone that the characters will meet. We keep reading not just to see what happens to each, but to see how they’ll come together and what that meeting will mean. In Doerr’s novel, the meeting between Marie-Laure and Werner is fleeting but luminous. He helps her survive, and in doing so, redeems a piece of himself. In Hosseini’s novel, the meeting between Mariam and Laila stretches across years; their relationship evolves from jealousy to solidarity to a bond deeper than blood. In both cases, the convergence is the heart of the story.

There’s also a thematic similarity in the way these arcs work. Doerr sets up Marie-Laure and Werner as opposites: she embodies silence and perception without sight, while he embodies sound, machinery, and complicity in a violent system. Their meeting brings those opposites into dialogue– her quiet resilience gives him a glimpse of another way to live. In Hosseini’s novel, Mariam and Laila start as foils, too. Mariam is older, resigned, and burdened by shame; Laila is young, hopeful, and loved. When they come together, those differences sharpen the initial conflict between them. But gradually, the contrast becomes complementarity. They fill each other’s gaps: Mariam learns hope from Laila, while Laila learns endurance from Mariam.

That rhythm between the contrasts of characters is beautifully intentional. And because of it, when their worlds finally overlap, it doesn’t feel forced.

Another striking similarity is the way both books use war not just as background but as the force that drives these arcs to intersect. In All the Light We Cannot See, without World War II, Werner would never have left his orphanage in Germany, and Marie-Laure would never have been trapped in Saint-Malo waiting for the bombs. The war narrows the vastness of Europe until their paths cross. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, without the decades of conflict in Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion, the civil war, and the rise of the Taliban, Laila would never be pushed into Rasheed’s house, and Mariam would never find someone to love like a daughter. War compresses geography and destiny, pushing people who might never have met into the same crucible.

Yet the emotional outcome of these convergences is different, and that difference says a lot about what each novel is trying to do. Doerr’s meeting is brief, almost a whisper. Werner saves Marie-Laure, and for a moment, their stories overlap in kindness before diverging again. It’s tragic, but it’s also radiant, like two stars passing close enough to illuminate each other before going their separate ways. Hosseini’s meeting, on the other hand, lasts for years. Mariam and Laila share a household, raise children together, and become each other’s family in the absence of anyone else. Their arcs don’t just touch. They fuse, changing both women permanently. 

Reading these novels side by side, I realised how satisfying this dual-arc structure is. It mirrors life in a way, like how we live our own separate stories until suddenly someone else’s life collides with ours and nothing is ever the same again. Doerr and Hosseini remind us that these collisions often happen in the hardest circumstances, and yet they produce some of the most meaningful connections.

For me, the joy of All the Light We Cannot See wasn’t just Marie-Laure’s courage or Werner’s struggle; it was the constant flicker of their stories edging closer and closer until they finally met. And the joy of A Thousand Splendid Suns wasn’t just Mariam’s quiet strength or Laila’s resilience; it was watching their separate lives bend toward each other until they became one story. Both novels show that even in war, even in the darkest times, human lives are drawn together by invisible threads; threads of chance, of survival, of love.

Despite their differences in setting and culture, both books remind us that storytelling itself is about weaving. Two separate threads, two separate colours, are placed side by side, and the beauty comes when they intertwine. We’re left with a tapestry richer and more moving than either thread alone could ever be.