Even though CLOUD CUCKOO LAND is dedicated to bookkeepers and librarians of the past, present, and future, it is also for anyone who has spent time in a confined space with immense pressure and anxiety upon them. This book is for those who didn't give in and maintained high morale, were hopeful, and found solace in books and stories instead.
CLOUD CUCKOO LAND introduces readers to five viewpoint characters over three timelines.
The 1400s Anna: sister of a seamstress within the walls of Constantinople about to be besieged by the Turks
Omeir: A deformed boy rejected by everyone but in the army of the Sultan, on their way to conquer Constantinople
2020 Seymour: a teenager with heightened senses. He is ready to detonate a bomb in a commercial building agency who he believes is the reason for the decline of Nature.
Zeno: an army veteran turned translator. He is in a library trying to save five children from Seymour and the bomb blast.
The Future Konstance: A young girl far away from Earth and is part of a crew on their way to a new habitable planet for humans.
Common to all these characters sprinkled across the timeline and divided geographically is a Greek fairy-tale. A tale about a simple peasant who searches for magic and magical land in the clouds, devoid of misery and hardships. The peasant refuses to give up even after being called "nincompoop," "lamebrained," and "muttonheaded" because of his nonsensical and impossible quest.
Thus ensues the saga of these five characters in their extraordinary circumstances, trying to live another day, another hour, another minute. Anthony Doerr wrote CLOUD CUCKOO LAND with the quarantine and the current pandemic in mind. All these characters have been forced barriers upon them, whether physically or mentally, they have to overcome. It is an homage to literature and stories and how they can transform lives. The same account was written even before our earliest narrator, Anna, was born, transcending time and helping them when they are at their lowest points in life. It also discusses how important it is to preserve these stories and their value; the book itself an excellent example. It is a case study telling the readers why it is crucial to record our history and the stories that we are told in our childhood. However nonsensical or fantastical it seems, the core values are always relevant and will help us in many ways.
Pick up CLOUD CUCKOO LAND if you are stuck somewhere and don't know how to pass your time; if you are in quarantine and want to read something relatable; if you like books and storytelling. Even if you don't come under the above categories, read it anyway. It's worth giving a shot, and I think everybody will take something out of it.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, 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 trying to figure out the world around them: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for an exoplanet, decades from now. Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril.An ancient text—the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky—provides solace and mystery to these unforgettable characters. Doerr has created a tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us and those who will be here after we’re gone.Dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come,” Cloud Cuckoo Land is a hauntingly beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship—of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.
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