Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, 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’re 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,
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, and 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.