Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
143 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $19.79
Club: $14.99

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Bestseller

Author: Anthony Doerr

Narrator: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones

Unabridged: 14 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/28/2021


Synopsis

AudioFile Magazine’s Best Audiobooks of 2021

On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more

“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review).

Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land 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 the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old 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. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.

In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses 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.

Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.

About Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr is the author of the New York Times bestselling Cloud Cuckoo Land, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.

About Simon Jones

Simon Jones Broadway credits include: The Real Thing, Benefactors, The School for Scandal, The Herbal Bed, and Waiting in the Wings (Outer Critics Circle nominee). Off-Broadway credits include: Woman in Mind, Terra Nova, Privates On Parade (Drama Desk nominee). Film and TV highlights: Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, The Devil's Own, Brideshead Revisited, PBS's Liberty and HBO's Oz.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on September 28, 2022

Sometimes the things we think are lost are only hidden, waiting to be rediscovered.Anthony Doerr has written a masterpiece of a tale, connecting five characters, over hundreds of years through their relationship to a single book. Cloud Cuckoo Land is an ancient story written by Antonius Diogenes......more

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on August 23, 2024

I would like to dedicate this book review to myself (That was a little bit of book humor for those who read the book) :) Cloud Cuckoo Land shifts between five characters: Konstance, Zeno, Seymour, Anna, and Omeir. Many years in the future, Konstance has been living in a space ship called The Argos he......more

Goodreads review by Nilufer on October 15, 2022

I know the logic behind watching an entertaining Tv show about nothing. At least it made me laugh out loud and gave me stomach cramps. ( in good way) But reading a long long and long book with multi POVs who are weekly connected with long long long descriptions about doing nothing with the long long......more

Goodreads review by emma on March 19, 2025

sure, reading is subjective, and yeah, art can mean something different to everyone who encounters it, and of course, criticism comes down to opinion the vast majority of the time. [URL not allowed] but who cares about any of that, because the following two things are true: 1) i......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on May 08, 2022

3.5 stars rounded up. All the Light We Cannot See is a favorite of mine, so even though I wasn’t sure if this one was going to be for me, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read this new novel by Anthony Doerr. There were moments while reading it that I was so taken by one character or another an......more


Quotes

"Marin Ireland and Simon Jones sparkle as they narrate this immersive time-traveling novel. They vividly deliver the stories that weave through this audiobook. A gifted mimic, Ireland performs subtle and effective emulations of Australian, Italian, and English accents. When she slows down to enunciate the classical Greek sprinkled throughout the text, her reading shimmers with meaning. Both Ireland and Jones are masters of pacing and cadence, which matters in an interwoven narrative that shifts in time from the fall of Constantinople (1450s) to present-day small-town Idaho and to a future set on a spacecraft. From accounts of myths to misbegotten environmental terrorism, Doerr's novel pulls out all the stops, and the narrators create an enduring listening experience."