Zeno finds joy in the ancient tales and is elated by the discovery. Zeno has spent years teaching himself ancient Greek and translating ancient works when a lost story, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is discovered in the Vatican library. They view the book as a talisman that gives them luck in their escape and even heals one of their sons when he has a fever. She and Omeir escape Constantinople as it falls to the Ottomans. Zeno is a gay man in rural Idaho in the mid-20th century Seymour is autistic Anna is an orphan Omeir is born with a cleft lip.Īnna discovers a codex of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ in an abandoned priory. Konstance is the last human left alive aboard the Argos. Omeir is a Bulgarian boy who is drafted by Sultan's army in their attack on Constantinople.Įach character is abandoned or outcast and each is saved by a story. Anna is a young girl that works in an embroidery shop with her sister in 15th century Constantinople. Seymour is a young man who is intent on placing a bomb in that library. Eighty-year-old Zeno is leading a group of fifth graders in a production of ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ at the public library. Konstance, 14, lives aboard The Argos, a spacecraft launched 65 years earlier headed to a distant planet that is to be man's new home. Doerr uses this imagined tale to tie his characters together, even though they are separated by geography and time.

Moreover, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of works that we know of but have been lost, some of them comedies about men being transformed into donkeys. On his journey he is turned into a donkey, a fish and a crow.Īlthough there is no actual ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ there was a first century writer named Antonius Diogenes.

The ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ in the novel is a first century tale written by Diogenes that tells the story of Aethon, a foolish shepherd who leaves home in search of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a fictional place where there is no pain and turtles walk around carrying honey cakes on their backs. Anthony Doerr tells their stories in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land,’ a book that he calls a “paean to books.”

A story that allows them to “slip the trap” of their fear or misery. Five characters living in three different centuries and four different places are all saved by a story.

Review cloud cuckoo land