Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
I credit All The Light We Cannot See, the prior novel from Anthony Doerr and winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, with kick-starting my love for reading after a years-long break when I moved from the UK to the US. When I discovered that Doerr’s third novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was set to be released, I immediately pre-ordered it, and having just finished the 640-page adventure through time and space, it’s not a decision I regret in the slightest.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a novel written for our times, something Doerr does so well. Telling the story of five primary characters over eight centuries is not an easy feat. Yet, Doerr keeps the reader engaged and turns the page without relying on cheap tricks–we care about his characters and journeys.
Similar to the last novel I read, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, Cloud Cuckoo Land also explores inter-planetary travel, pandemics, and the importance of literature in passing down the story of humanity through the ages. Still, it does so in a more profound and meaningful way that was a pleasure to read.
It is a true art to craft a story that weaves together narratives from such varied settings. Doerr’s telling of the Ottoman invasion of Constantinople is as gripping as the plotline that sees a young girl coming of age on a starship headed for an earth-like planet called BetaOph2. In the present day, we explore the effects of gentrification on a small lakeside community, centered on a young boy driven by an online climate activist group to take drastic action to stop further development, threatening the lives of a group of small children and a few adults rehearsing for a production of the ancient text that ties all of these seemingly disparate strands together.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a wonderful ode to the power of literature that explores the deep-seated need to have a place where we feel at home, and the lengths we will go to protect what we hold dear.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is out now. Purchase it from your local independent bookstore today!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
Listen to a song from ThatTrack that I feel would be used to score a scene in a movie adaptation of Cloud Cuckoo Land here: “Mykonos Dreaming.” ThatTrack is a music licensing platform for content creators. You can check it out here.
