Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cloud Cuckoo Land follows several people living centuries apart, all linked by one ancient text. Anthony Doerr, the author of All the Light We Cannot See, uses their separate stories to ask how anyone gets through the collapse of the world they know, and what remains afterward.

In Constantinople in 1453, an orphaned seamstress and a boy who is thought to be cursed and who loves animals find themselves on opposite sides of the city wall. Each of them takes great risks to protect the people they care about. In Idaho in 2020, a poor and idealistic young man is furious at a world that seems to be falling apart and plans to make it pay. Between him and that plan stands a gentle old man, and it is uncertain whether the boy can carry it out.

The third strand is set at an unnamed time in the future. Konstance belongs to a small community in danger, and she may be the last hope for humanity. To find a way forward, she turns to the oldest stories she can find.

The three threads draw together around that single old book, and the novel becomes a story about hope, about the bonds between people, and about why storytelling matters most when everything else is lost.