Like Proust’s magic lantern, the folio in Cloud Cuckoo Land acts as both symbol and structural element – it is the physical manifestation of “story” but also serves as the device that threads the narrative together, and becomes effectively the sixth main character in the novel. Clair refers to as the 'contingency of human knowledge.' This book is a story about the overarching power of 'story' - to transport, transform & redeem in ways both literal and metaphorical. For me, the most memorable theme of the novel is the one touched on at the end of the review, what St. The fable-originally written for Diogenes’ dying niece-is a source of comfort and meaning in the midst of suffering.Īn insightful review of a book I also greatly enjoyed. And as they learn and transmit Aethon’s story, they discover its insights transcend naive utopianism without reverting to depressing materialism. They’ve been profoundly shaped by their experiences and cultures and defined by their relationships with other creatures, whether family members, owls, oxen, or would-be lovers. Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance are outsiders, each on their own quest, but they are not flat archetypes or atomized individuals. Diogenes’ tale-narrated by Aethon, a simple shepherd who seeks to become a bird and fly to a paradisiacal city in the sky-seems at first like a comedic quest for utopia, with each of the main characters in some way mirroring Aethon’s journey.ĭoerr’s characters run the gamut of the human condition.

The text in question is Cloud Cuckoo Land, a (fictional) fable by the (real) ancient Greek romance author Antonius Diogenes.

Over the course of more than 600 pages, readers travel back and forth between 15th-century Constantinople, 21st-century Idaho, and a 22nd-century starship, discovering that these apparently disparate times and places-and the characters who inhabit them-are connected by their encounters with and care for a particular book.

To say the scope of Anthony Doerr’s 2021 novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, is ambitious is an understatement. “Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you.”

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