Description
Cloud Cuckoo Land weaves the lives of different people connected by one powerful story, spanning the course of hundreds of years. In ancient Constantinople, an orphan who yearns to read crosses paths with a village boy fleeing his home in Bulgaria. In modern-day Idaho, an octogenarian rehearses a play with children in a library, where a teenage boy has planted a bomb. And in the future, a young girl lives on an interstellar ship, immersed in stories told to her by her father. Eventually, these stories come together in one compelling ending.
Anthony Doerr’s prose is as beautiful as it was in All the Light We Cannot See, but in Cloud Cuckoo Land, it covers historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary all at the same time. At times, this combination was a little much — while ultimately connected, each story feels drastically different until the end, and some narratives were a lot more interesting to me than others. Still, the story is unique, with echoes of Cloud Atlas, and another testament to Doerr’s incredible skill as a writer.
