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"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story. The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are children trying to figure out the world around them, and to survive. In the besieged city of Constantinople in 1453, in a public library in Lakeport, Idaho, today, and on a spaceship bound for a distant exoplanet decades from now, an ancient text provides solace and the most profound human connection to characters in peril. They all learn the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a better world. Twelve-year-old Anna lives in a convent where women toil all day embroidering the robes of priests. She learns to read from an old Greek tutor she encounters on her errands in the city. In an abandoned priory, she finds a stash of old books. One is Aethon's story, which she reads to her sister as the walls of Constantinople are bombarded by armies of Saracens. Anna escapes, carrying only a small sack with bread, salt fish-and the book. Outside the city walls, Anna meets Omeir, a village boy who was conscripted, along with his beloved pair of oxen, to fight in the Sultan's conquest. His oxen have died; he has deserted. In Lakeport, Idaho, in 2020, Seymour, a young activist bent on saving the earth, sits in the public library with two homemade bombs in pressure cookers-another siege. Upstairs, eighty-five-year old Zeno, a former prisoner-of-war, and an amateur translator, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon's adventures. On an interstellar ark called The Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault with sacks of Nourish powder and access to all the information in the world-or so she is told. She knows Aethon's story through her father, who has sequestered her to protect her. Konstance, encased on a spaceship decades from now, has never lived on our beloved Earth. Alone in a vault with sacks of Nourish powder and access to "all the information in the world," she knows Aethon's storythrough her father. Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Konstance, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, the young Zeno, the children in the library are dreamers and misfits on the cusp of adulthood in a world the grown-ups have broken. They through their own resilience and resourcefulness, and through story. Dedicated to "the librarians then, now, and in the years to come," Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is about the power of story and the astonishing survival of the physical book when for thousands of years they were so rare and so feared, dying, as one character says, "in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants." It is a hauntingly beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship-of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart"--… (more)
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The book contains four stories. In the past, Omeir is a rural boy conscripted into war, where he meets Anna, a seamstress who works in the palace. In modern time, Zeno is a
On page 473, one of the characters describes the myth as “Part fairy tale, part fool’s errand, part science fiction, part Utopian satire”. That is also a description of this novel. It is a story of interrelationship, commonalities among human beings across time and space. It's about the power of a story and how that power manifests itself with different people: a quest for knowledge, the power of hope and imagination; a need to connect with others and with the world.
Okay, maybe I did love it.
Doerr notes that he intended the novel as a paean to books. It is that but I think it is also a paean to the human condition. It is a fascinating read.
Gosh, I was really waiting for this book from Doerr. I loved his other books, but this one is a little confusing, although still captivating. It travels back and forth in time from the past to the present to the
The characters range in age from young adult teenagers, Anna, Omeir, Seymour and Konstance, to Zeno, an octogenarian. Each has a unique, individual story. Anna and Omeir are characters in the 15th century, in 1452 during the war in Constantinople. Seymour and Zeno are characters in the 21st century, around 2020, a time when the environment is front and center politically. Konstance is a character from sometime in the future. Her family chose to participate in an experiment and she has never known life anyplace else but on the spaceship Argos. She shares her life with a computer character named Sybil who is supposed to know all there is to know.
Each of the characters is searching for something, and throughout, the story of Cloud Cuckoo Land, supposedly written by Antonius Diogenes, connects them through time and space. The worlds they occupy are spinning out of control with manmade disasters or natural disasters that are somehow exacerbated by man. There is war, pestilence, disability, cruelty, hunger, poverty, disease, environmental destruction, out of control technology among many other issues that pop up in all societies coupled with a smattering of compassion that is interspersed between the pages, as well. Some characters are gentle, some obedient, some are kind and some cruel, some honest and some reckless, but all find a way to interconnect in the end as the performance of Cloud Cuckoo Land is almost ready to be performed, by a group of students who love the story, although it is silly and highly unbelievable. Like the phantasmagorical story, so is the novel, and one must suspend disbelief in order to make the connection with the characters, as they too, connect with each other’s dreams at different times of history and the future.
Several disparate themes recur throughout the book. Books are an important theme as are superstition, fear, sadness, education, animals and other trusted creatures (owls, birds, dogs and donkeys), and, above all, the environment. Not to be left out are pandemics and disasters, wars and destruction, betrayals and dysfunction, disabilities, race and homosexuality. With all of these recurring unfortunate themes, the book supposedly offers hope for the survival of mankind. I am afraid, I did not entirely agree. The descriptions were often too graphic for me and the stories too bizarre. Still, one theme came through for me in the end, and that was…be careful what you wish for, sometimes it is disappointing, and what you already possess is likely far better. Simple is often more satisfying than complicated, and books may hold the answers to everything.
Because of the confusing timeline and thread of utter fantasy grounded in real problems, I believe the print book would be a better choice than the audio, although it is superbly performed and each character has a unique tone and personality.
With extraordinary writing skills, this author to me, is a master story teller. His ability to transport readers into breathtaking worlds is surely a cut above the rest, and certainly makes him worthy of being an esteemed member of the Pulitzer family in the category of fiction. Is it similar to "All the Light We Cannot See”? No, not at all. In fact the author jumps off the diving board into a whole new realm and does it quite brilliantly.
To say that I have never read such a creative and clever story such as “Cloud Cuckoo Land” is simply the truth. This is a story about a story told in 4 stories. Yes, that is what I just said.
Fact: In ancient Greece, there was an author named Antonius Diogenes who wrote a fantastical fairytale-like story called “The Wonders of Thule”. Today only fragments of 12 pages remain. With snippets of Homer’s Odyssey, The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius, and what I think reminded me of the journey that Pinocchio took, the tale is of a poor shepherd boy who embarks on a wondrous pilgrimage wishing all along that he could be transformed into a bird.
Within four different narratives of people in three different times and places, Anthony Doerr deftly interlaces the wise old Greek fable into each of their lives in the most creative and unique ways possible.
Current times. Inside a small town library in Idaho an elderly Greek man named Zeno Ninis is directing a group of children who are acting out a play of "The Wonders of Thule", when a young and troubled young man named Seymour enters the building planning to set off a bomb.
Ancient Istanbul 14th century. The lives of a young girl named Anna and a young boy named Omeir collide in desperate times with their individual stories of tragedy and survival. Omeir was born with a cleft lip leaving him ugly enough for his parents to sell him and his two pet oxen to a Sultan on crusade planning to attack the city of Constantinople. Anna and her sister are orphans raised by a wealthy Greek man who employs them as master embroiderers. When her sister falls ill, she learns of a young man who scrounges for anything worth selling in order to eat. When Anna becomes his assistant in theft she finds a valuable codex copy of "The Wonders of Thule".
Far in the Future. On a spaceship named the Argos, teenager Konstance lives with many families who are traveling to a distant planet after Earth has been devastated from fatal environmental disasters. When Konstance was a child her father read a bedtime story to her. It was called "The Wonders of Thule". When a deadly virus mysteriously leaves her the sole survivor onboard the Argos, magical advanced technology helps Konstance uncover many secrets of the real truth behind the Argos’ mission.
Anthony Doerr weaves a glorious carpet of connecting threads that lie within each of the character’s stories individually and as a whole so well, that by the time you come to the end you will be in awe of his ability to narrate such an incredible tale. I can only hope he will win another Pulitzer prize for this beautiful novel that seriously knocked my socks off. This book will make you appreciate the talent this author renders up to his readers.
I usually give a star rating to my reviews, but honestly there are no high enough stars for books like this. Buy it, read it, be inspired! Feel the magic and the wonder of books! Thank you Anthony Doerr!
First, this is insanely overwritten. Crazily overwritten. There is a lot of wildly over-descriptive writing to no purpose whatsoever. This book could have easily been at least 150 pages shorter without losing anything in terms of impact. I read whole pages that did nothing but set a scene that had already been set (often repeatedly - each time Doerr returns to a place he describes it again) or advance the story. This is an issue for me -- you decide if it is an issue for you. BTW, this is also a problem I have with Stephen King, and it goes without saying that most people love his books.
Second, why are there so many stories, and why are the sections so short, careening between centuries and settings? It is like reading Twitter feeds. I said in my initial comments that this is the turducken of books. One story in another in another in another. As with turducken, I am awed by someone's ability to fit together three incompatible birds seamlessly and then bring them together into a unified whole. And like turducken each of these seamlessly pieced together elements would taste better on its own. Poultry tastes better with its bones and with its skin crisped by direct heat. Also, when birds are glommed together each loses its essence surrendering to generic birdiness. Duck and turkey should not taste the same. Turducken (and this book) are a celebration of form over substance, of craft over art. There are so many stories with so many colors but when brought together they all blend into brown.
In the end this is a very accessible book, super easy to read (I am a fast reader, but I do not generally blast through 600+ pages in a week while also reading other books and also living a life.) I read and listened to the book (audio is so much easier on the subway especially with a 600+ page book) and I adored the narration on this as one would expect with the brilliant Simon Jones and Marin Ireland on the job. I will say that having the text as well helped me keep things straight that might have confused me with just the audio.
I thought this was an amazing read, so thought provoking. I think it would be ideal to discuss at a book club. So much to talk about. It’s beautifully written and I loved how all the stories interweaved and connected, making me think. There’s that word again! But it really is about connections and also hope for the future, being thankful for what we have and being careful what we wish for. In a way it’s quite the adventure story, there’s some mythology and it touches on the ecosystem, deforestation. An imaginative, clever, absorbing and wonderful safari across time.
Cloud Cuckoo Land encompasses multiple time periods, locations and characters making the first half of the book a struggle to enjoy and the richness, depth and backstory of the characters Doerr created became overshadowed by the time leaps.
The reader is transported to Lakeport, Idaho 2020 where the lives of an elderly man and a young man become entwined, Constantinople, in the mid 1400's where Anna first becomes acquainted with an ancient text, which will affect everyone in the novel, and Omeir of Bulgaria who is on his way to invade Anna's village and lastly, into the future aboard a spacecraft where Konstance and her fellow travelers struggle for survival.
It's quite a lot to digest, however, all roads lead to the ancient text in a somewhat leap of artistic license.
Overall, Doerr's work is creative, the writing top notch, the characters are well drawn and the locales, well described. I certainly recommend it for its originality and prose however, the novel seemed a bit sluggish at first, continue on, it is the second half of the book which propelled me forward.
Thanks to NetGalley for affording me the privilege to read the ARC of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Thanks to the author, Scribner and Edelweiss+ for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
I've found myself once again fully enveloped in the world of an Anthony Doerr novel. I was so enamored by All The Light We Cannot See, I was at the same time excited and wary to give this book a
Cloud Cuckoo Land connects a group of characters from multiple time periods, places, and circumstances through an old Greek codex of the same name. From 15th century Constantinople, to a town in present day Idaho, to a spacecraft in the near future, Doerr was able to weave together all of these lives so beautifully without any of the stories feeling disjointed from the rest. Every character felt fully formed and I was able to empathize with each of them. There were also some really great and unexpected twists in the books that made it really hard to put down, especially as I neared the end and all of the information started to come together and reveal itself.
All in all, I'd say if you're a fan of Doerr's style or looking for a new book to read that doesn't sit staunchly in one genre or another, this would be an excellent choice.
Ultimately I came to love so many of the characters, the timelines, the places (especially the “second story of a dilapidated public library in a little town in central Idaho”) and all the implications of all the prejudices and the knockout question of “How do men convince themselves that others must die so they might live?”.
So many thoughts and questions which could be treatises, stories, books:
“Strange how suffering can look beautiful if you get far enough away.”
“The world as it is is enough.”
“The past, present and future walked into a bar. It was tense.”
More to the point in this book;
The past, present and future walked into a library. It was intense.
Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a copy
Anthony Doerr’s novel centers on a mythical tale at once absurd and infinitely wise, one nearly lost until saved by an orphan girl and restored by an autodidact of ancient Greek and consulted by a young girl in space who comes to understand its message. And the message
Doerr tells the individual stories of Kontance, a young girl on a space ark traveling to a habitable planet light years from earth, to a world multiple generations distant that she will never see, to escape Earth’s environmental destruction. Anna lives in Constantinople in 1453, orphaned and poor, laboring in an ecclesiastical seamstress shop, awaiting the seize of the city, adrift until she’s introduced to the mysteries of ancient texts and their true value. Omeir is a peasant farm boy conscripted into the Sultan’s seize army, born with a cleft palate, a challenge he learns to overcome, whose life intersects directly with Anna’s. Zeno, also abandoned as a boy, raised by an eccentric woman, goes off to fight the Korean War, where he begins learning ancient Greek while a prisoner of the Chinese, taught by a British school teacher he falls in unrequited love with. His life directly intersects with Seymour, an autistic boy growing up poor in a small town in Idaho, a boy who grows to love nature and the creatures who live in it, and develops a deadly passion for defending the environment he loves. These characters from different eras prove to have much in common. They dream of better lives, they learn as they grow and experience life, they live on the fringe of their societies, and they share one way or another in the influence of an ancient, fragmented text of a tall tale, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes (a real individual and author of an ancient Greek romance entitled The Wonders Beyond Thule, cited by Doerr an inspiration, among others, for this novel).
The rewards of Cloud Cuckoo Land are several: Doerr’s beautiful writing, his ingenuity in tying these disparate lives together in a narrative that becomes more united as it progresses, and the power of a book and its ideas to bring people together, acknowledge their dreams, and provide them with the wherewithal to find their best lives and appreciate the good in what often appears to be a hopelessly muddled and doomed world. You’ll find it one of this year’s best and perhaps most illuminating novels.
Anna, a young orphan in Constantinople, learns to read, eventually finding the story of Aethon, which she reads to her dying sister. The book is a source of comfort to them during their difficult times.
Omeir, a poor village boy ends up in Constantinople and meets Anna as they both flee the city which was under siege. Omeir helps Anna keep the book safe throughout their journey.
These two stories connect with a man named Zeno, who lives 500 years later in the United States and spends his days in the local library. Zeno, who also knew Greek, translated the story of Aethon and is helping a group of children perform a play of the story.
Konstance, who lives in the future, also knows the story of Aethon, as it was told to her by her father. These four unlikely timelines, connected by Aethon, show us how we are all linked to each other both during our time on this earth and beyond.
I thought this was a clever, well done tale, that was so different from anything I have read. It is one book I could see myself re-reading in the future. Readers of historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction will not want to pass this one up!
Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for allowing me to read an advance copy and give my honest review.
narration skips between different characters within different storylines in the distant past, the more-or-less present day, and the distant future -- each story is immersive and interesting, all seemingly linked together by a longing for or desire to connect
I did enjoy All the Light We Cannot See (in print format) but I could easily abandon this one after listening to a couple hours. I'll stick with it a while longer, but we'll see how it goes.
update: made it to 3 hours, pausing for now to read something else but may come back to it.
As a fan of Pulitzer Prize winning Anthony Doerr’s short stories and novels, I find this to be the next step in his evolution as an author.