03849cam a2200373 i 4500 623520390 TxAuBib 20220810120000.0 210126s2021||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2021002936 9781982168438 hardcover 1982168439 hardcover (OCoLC)1233266494 DLC DLC eng eng rda rda rda DLC rda BDX DLC MJ8 T3Q LJW LMJ DLC OCLCO OQX ILC JTH TXAAL TxAuBib BDX MJ8 T3Q LJW LMJ DLC OCLCO OQX ILC JTH TXAAL TxAuBib rda Doerr, Anthony, 1973-, author. Cloud Cuckoo Land / By Anthony Doerr. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York : Scribner, 2021. 626 pages ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time, comes the highly anticipated Cloud Cuckoo Land. 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'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. 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. 20220810. Space and time Fiction. Future, The Fiction. Libraries Fiction. Interstellar travel Fiction. Istanbul (Turkey) History Siege, 1453 Fiction. Science fiction. Historical fiction. Fiction. TXKPL