Books & Puzzles
"Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr
- Item Number
- 303
- Estimated Value
- 30 USD
- Sold
- 28 USD to icc1a1d24
The winning bid will go to FrontStream Global Fund (tax ID 26-3265577), a 501c3 nonprofit organization, which will send the donation to UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST CONGREGATIONAL (tax ID 042835334) on behalf of the winner.
- Number of Bids
- 5 - Bid History
Item Description
This hard-cover novel was written by the author of the Pulitzer Prize winner, All the Light We Cannot See. Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr's gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope -- and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness -- with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we are gone.
Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless and insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna's will cross.
Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon's story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.
And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of gravest danger. Their lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr's dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own. Dedicated to the librarians then, now, and in the years to come, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship -- of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.
Donated By:
Cindy and Paul Worthington-Berry
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