Cloud Cuckoo Land
and beloved literary fiction of our time comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story. The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are children trying to figure out the world around them, and to survive. In the besieged city of Constantinople in 1453, in a public library in Lakeport, Idaho, today, and on a spaceship bound for a distant exoplanet decades from now, an ancient text provides solace and the most profound human connection to characters in peril. They all learn the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a better world. Twelve-year-old Anna lives in a convent where women toil all day embroidering the robes of priests. She learns to read from an old Greek tutor she encounters on her errands in the city. In an abandoned priory, she finds a stash of old books. One is Aethon's story, which she reads to her sister as the walls of Constantinople are bombarded by armies of Saracens. Anna escapes, carrying only a small sack with bread, salt fish-and the book. Outside the city walls, Anna meets Omeir, a village boy who was conscripted, along with his beloved pair of oxen, to fight in the Sultan's conquest. His oxen have died; he has deserted. In Lakeport, Idaho, in 2020, Seymour, a young activist bent on saving the earth, sits in the public library with two homemade bombs in pressure cookers-another siege.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
6mentions
6people
2022–2026years
17% recommend67% neutral17% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I was going to say this – though I've only read it once, I'll certainly read it again. Loved how much it immersed you in the world.
Recently I enjoyed Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr for similar reasons, if you're looking for recommendations!
- And then there’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. (Anthony Doerr)
- That's not necessarily bad news.
Everyone interested in this story should read Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve (https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/stephen-greenblatt).
It traces the story of a Renaissance humanist who tracked down and translated the Epicurean philosopher/poet Lucretius' De Rerem Natura, which Greenblatt describes as portraying a strikingly modern way of seeing the world.
In particular Lucretius and the Epicureans denied the existence of supernatural causes, were opposed to religious fear, and posited the ideas of atomism and biological evolution. Of course they're better known for their approach to living life, which Greenblatt shows is more sophisticated than sometimes caricatured, and which he portrays as a breath of fresh air compared to the oppressive moralism and hypocrisy of the Church at the time. (Jefferson and many of the American Founders described themselves as Epicureans.)
He goes on to imply that Epicureanism was influential and widespread in the ancient world but suppressed by the early Church, so that we now know little of it.
Anyone, one of the tantalizing parts of the book is where he describes the carbonized and unreadable Herculaneum scrolls, since they were the private library of a wealthy patron of the Epicureans. I think he thinks being able to read the scrolls will really change our understanding of the ancient world.
And remember: if they hadn't been carbonized, they would have crumbled to dust. That's why we only have the texts that managed to get copied. (Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is a novel about the survival and 21st century rediscovery of an imaginary Greek play, and ... I'll let you read it yourself - https://www.anthonydoerr.com/books/cloud-cuckoo-land)
(Apologies for any errors above, as basically all I know about this subject is what I read in the book!)
- Not a recommendation per se, but I recently finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr that has a rough tie in with Apuleius.
- thankyou.gif
Nothing turns me off an author who can write prose well faster than switching perspectives every chapter - you're throwing out one of, if not _the_ biggest advantage of long-form narrative : the ability to get deeply into the head of a character.
I had to stop reading Cloud Cuckoo Land because of this. And while I'm shouting into the void, this goes for you too, TV/movie producers:
Just tell the damn story straight. If you can't do that and make it interesting, you need a better story.
- Not the commenter, this premise is a story line in Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land" (2021). This knowledge is a bit of a spoiler, however.
