Anthony Doerr's novel All the Light We Cannot See was the international book of the year in the Australian Book Industry Awards last May. But that was just the start of the novel's Australian success. Last week it was No. 4 on the BookScan bestseller list and Dymocks' No. 1 bestseller. That's amazing for a two-year-old literary novel by a little-known American author who has never visited Australia. The novel won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in April, which helped, but not as much as the Booker Prize might. What's driving the popularity?

"It's an incredible success story," says Shona Martyn, publishing director at HarperCollins Australia. After a slow climb since 2014, sales have reached 134,988 copies, including 47,119 ebooks and more than 57,000 of the cheaper second format. Martyn expects the figure to top 200,000 "because there's so much satisfaction with the book. It's not controversial, it universally satisfies men and women. It's a World War II story but from a different perspective, and it's exceptionally easy to read and beautifully written".

The story follows the intersecting lives of a blind French girl and an orphaned German boy who becomes a tracker of Resistance fighters. Now HarperCollins is marketing the novel to young readers who loved books such as The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. "Once over 100,000 people have read a book, word of mouth is significant. We're reprinting 20,000 copies at a time," Martyn says.

If you want more Doerr, HarperCollins will publish a new edition of his 2004 novel, About Grace, in June and has in print his short stories and Four Seasons in Rome, a travel memoir that links the birth of his twin sons with the decade he took to write All the Light.

LIGHT AND DARK BESTSELLERS

At Dymocks bookstores, monthly sales of Doerr's novel have risen from 386 in April to 1228 in May and 5670 in December. Sophie Higgins, head of merchandise and marketing, says it was one of her favourites in 2014 and "I haven't heard of anyone who hasn't liked it".

Higgins is pleased to see All the Light We Cannot See topping bestseller lists along with other literary fiction – Elena Ferrante's​ Neapolitan series, The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagahira​.

"They buck the trend of books disappearing after three months," she says.

Higgins is not a fan of Yanagahira's divisively grim novel about four young men in New York who support a friend traumatised by childhood abuse. Unlike Doerr's novel, she says, "I couldn't recommend it to many people".

Although Yanagahira has had many positive reviews, her US editor at Doubleday, Gerald Howard, wrote a letter to the editors of The New York Review of Books complaining that Daniel Mendelsohn's harsh review in December had wrongly accused the author of "duping" readers into feeling pity, terror, sadness and compassion by loading excessive suffering on her protagonist.

I found the novel wearing, but have talked to almost equal numbers who have loved and hated it. It's great to have literature that provokes such passion.

HONOURED WRITERS

Congratulations to the writers and illustrators recognised in the Australia Day honours for their books and work in areas such as human rights, including Geraldine Brooks, Rosie Scott, Harvey Broadbent, Jackie French, Ann James and many others whose writing is part of their work in other fields. Also to Catherine Keenan, a former Herald literary editor, for her work in founding The Sydney Story Factory in Redfern, which has helped thousands of children to express themselves in writing.