Triumph over Darkness : The Life of Louis Braille

First published in 1988, Triumph over Darkness is a stirring story of determination and tenacity in the face of adversity. Born in France in 1809, Louis Braille was the 4th child of a village saddler. At the age of three he stabbed himself in the eye with a pointed tool taken from his father’s work bench. Some 13 years later he again took a sharp tool from the same bench and used it to create a code of raised dots punched through sheets of paper. With the patience of genius, he perfected his code- still unsurpassed-and fashioned an alphabet that opened the world of learning to the blind.

Louis Braille died at the age of 43 unknown and unhonoured. He superiors at the Royal Institute for the Young Blind in Paris would not recognise the system that was not based on the shapes of the alphabet. Lennard Bickel researched this story in Paris and in the small village where Louis Braille was born. He tells of the trials and torments of a young blind man struggling amid the harshest conditions to perfect something he believed in. This book will be of interest to general readers interested in the life of Louis Braille.