Cloud Cuckoo Land is a 2021 historical and speculative fiction novel by Pulitzer -prize winning author Anthony Doerr . It was first published on September 28, 2021, in the United States by Charles Scribner's Sons and the United Kingdom by Fourth Estate . The novel centers around an Ancient Greek codex that links characters from fifteenth-century Constantinople , present-day Idaho , and a twenty-second-century starship .
20-699: Doerr is a respelling of Dörr , a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: Anthony Doerr (born 1973), American writer Bobby Doerr (1918–2017), American baseball player and coach Harriet Doerr (1910–2002), American writer John Doerr (born 1951), American businessman Robert Doerr (c. 1914 – 2013), American politician and educator Steve Doerr (born 1959), American soccer player Susan Doerr (born 1945), American swimmer Thomas Doerr (born 1964), American architect and writer See also [ edit ] Dorr (disambiguation) [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
40-471: A group of ecoterrorists . In the twenty-second century, Konstance is a young girl aboard the Argos , a generation starship heading for a planet called Beta Oph2. Their stories are bound by an Ancient Greek codex entitled Cloud Cuckoo Land that each of the five characters discover and find solace in. It is a fictional book written by real Greek novelist Antonius Diogenes in the second century, and tells
60-484: A novel", that is "large-hearted ... joyous [and] a deep lungful of fresh air". She complimented the skill with which Doerr weaves each of his character's narratives into Diogenes’ fable. Knox stated that Doerr's novel shows "how things survive by chance, and through love" and that love is needed "to save what we still have on Earth". In another review in The Guardian , Hephzibah Anderson wrote that Cloud Cuckoo Land
80-453: A public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, decades from now, who turns to the oldest stories to guide her community in peril. Cloud Cuckoo Land was released September 28, 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction . Doerr lives in Boise , Idaho with his wife Shauna Eastman and two sons. ——————— Cloud Cuckoo Land (novel) Cloud Cuckoo Land
100-565: Is a contributor to The Morning News , an online magazine. From 2007 to 2010, he was the Writer in Residence for the state of Idaho. Doerr's third novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land , follows three story lines, scattered throughout time: 13-year-old Anna and Omeir, an orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy, on opposite sides of formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on
120-618: Is a fictional book-within-a-book that Doerr wrote, but credited to Diogenes. Ideas for the fable come from The Golden Ass by Apuleius , which Doerr says tells the story of a man turning into a donkey "with far more zest and skill than I do". Many of Zeno's experiences as a prisoner of war in Korea appear in Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War: An Oral History of Korean War POWs (2002) by Lewis H. Carlson. While researching defensive walls for his previous novel All
140-849: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Anthony Doerr Anthony Doerr is an American author of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . Raised in Cleveland, Ohio , Doerr attended the nearby University School , graduating in 1991. He then majored in history at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine , graduating in 1995. He earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University . Doerr's first book
160-506: Is full of "[w]onderment and despair, love and destruction and hope". With its "lyrical" text and classical philosophy intermingling with the climate crisis , Anderson described the book as "a tribute to the magic of reading". Marcel Theroux wrote in a review in The New York Times that Cloud Cuckoo Land is "a wildly inventive novel that teems with life, straddles an enormous range of experience and learning, and embodies
180-618: Is the story of five characters spanning eight centuries. In the fifteenth-century Byzantine Empire , Anna is a young seamstress living in Constantinople , and Omeir is a village boy conscripted into the Ottoman army , as they are preparing to take the city . In the present day, Zeno, a Korean War veteran, works in a library in Idaho translating Ancient Greek texts, while Seymour, a disturbed autistic youngster, becomes caught up with
200-439: The surname Doerr . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doerr&oldid=1070588996 " Categories : Surnames German-language surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
220-608: The Light We Cannot See (2014), which centers on the walled city of Saint-Malo , Doerr kept finding references to Constantinople . He said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that its walls had withstood many sieges, and that it was only when gunpowder appeared in Europe that the Ottomans were able to breach its defenses with cannons in 1453. His fascination with the city's story made him realize that he had to write about it. Doerr said he set part of Cloud Cuckoo Land in
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#1732772794089240-534: The action in full flow and the reader turning the pages. The descriptions of Constantinople, Idaho, and the Argos are each distinct and fully realized, and the protagonists of each are united by a determination to survive and a hunger for stories." Kirkus Reviews agreed, also in a starred review, praising Doerr's many "narrative miracles" for uniting the novel's storylines. In a review in The Guardian , Elizabeth Knox called Cloud Cuckoo Land "a gift of
260-514: The book received a "positive" consensus, based on thirty-one critic reviews: one "rave", five "positive", one "mixed", and three "pan". On November/December 2021 issue of Bookmarks , the book received a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] (4.0 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a summary saying, "A deeply humane, magical work". Publishers Weekly , in its starred review , wrote, "Doerr seamlessly shuffles each of these narratives in vignettes that keep
280-487: The future to show how long ancient texts could survive. He noted that those sections are "not quite science fiction", but added that they were the result of extensive research into what life could be like then. Doerr added that Bill McKibben 's book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019) helped him picture what Earth may look like in the twenty-second century. According to Book Marks ,
300-568: The magic of childhood reading experiences." In a largely negative review in The Irish Times , Barry Pierce called Doerr's "multi-genre epic" "a convoluted work". He said that while the sections in the present have some of the novel's "strongest plotting and best writing", the Constantinople pieces tend to stagnate, and the time spent aboard the Argos "reads like a literary fiction author attempting to do sci-fi". He also found
320-621: The short chapters that hop between characters and genres "exhausting" and "the literary equivalent of late-night channel hopping". Pierce concluded that overall, the novel's plot is "technically, masterfully done", and notwithstanding the weaker sections, it keeps moving at a brisk pace, but added that "there may actually be some truth behind the concept of something being too big to fail." Writing in The Washington Post , Ron Charles also called Cloud Cuckoo Land "convoluted". He wrote that while each character's tales could have been
340-523: The story of Aethon, a shepherd on a quest to find the fabled paradise in the sky. In his travels, he is transformed into a donkey, a sea bass , and finally a crow, which allows him to fly to the gates of the city in the clouds. Doerr stated in Cloud Cuckoo Land 's "Author's Note" that his novel draws on several other books, most notably Antonius Diogenes ' now-lost "globetrotting tale", Wonders Beyond Thule . The Cloud Cuckoo Land codex
360-403: The storytelling gifts that it celebrates." He said that its characters are "engaging" and the storytelling is "bracing and energetic". He found it "an amazing feat" that Doerr is able to hold together the different narratives, spanning eight centuries, and still produce a "compelling, coherent and moving" book. Theroux concluded that it is "a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with
380-495: Was a collection of short stories called The Shell Collector (2002). His first novel, About Grace , was released in 2004. His memoir, Four Seasons in Rome , was published in 2007, and his second collection of short stories, Memory Wall, was published in 2010. Doerr's second novel, All the Light We Cannot See , is set in occupied France during World War II and was published in 2014. It received significant critical acclaim and
400-495: Was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction . The book was a New York Times bestseller , and was named by the newspaper as a notable book of 2014. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. It was runner-up for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction and won the 2015 Ohioana Library Association Book Award for Fiction. Doerr writes a column on science books for The Boston Globe and
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