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A Novel
by Anthony Doerr
Book Reviewed by: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.
There are so many extraordinary things about this complex novel that it's hard to know where to begin. It defies classification, alternating between contemporary fiction, historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and Doerr handles each of the genres superbly. The stories themselves are fascinating, too. Every last character is unique and vibrant, and I grew to love and understand each of them, even a young man about to cause death and destruction. And, of course, there's Doerr's prose, which is heartbreakingly beautiful at times; there's plenty of gorgeous description, but it's never so dense that it slows down the book's pace...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Parts of Anthony Doerr's novel Cloud Cuckoo Land take place during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 CE. Constantinople (now known as Istanbul) had long been an important trading hub by the time it was officially established by Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 330 CE. The ruler moved his government to the city, and it consequently became the capital of the Byzantine Empire and the center of Christianity — a position it held for a millennium. By the 15th century, however, both the city and the empire were in decline; schism had weakened the church, warring among European powers had caused fragmentation of the empire, and plague had killed off much of the population. Still, Constantinople was looked on as the last bastion ...
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