Cloud Cuckoo Land

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
‘A dazzling epic of love, war and the joy of books’ Guardian
‘Ingenious, hopefuly and totally absorbing’ Financial Times
‘Buoyant with humanity’ Daily Mail

When everything is lost, it’s our stories that survive

How do we weather the end of things? Cloud Cuckoo Land brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from past, present and future to offer a vision of survival against all odds.

Constantinople, 1453:
An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love.

Idaho, 2020:

An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans?

Unknown, Sometime in the Future:

With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories of all for guidance.

Bound together by a single ancient text, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience and a celebration of storytelling itself. Like its predecessor All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s new novel is a tale of hope and of profound human connection.

‘Wonderment and despair, love and destruction and hope – all find their place in its sumptuously plotted pages’ Observer

‘This engagingly written, big-hearted book is a must-read’ Daily Mirror

‘Serious novels are rarely this fun’ The Times

“Praise for All the Light We Cannot See: 'Far more than a conventional war story, It's a tightly focused epic ... Doerr paints with a rich palette, using prose that resonates deeply and conveys the ephemera of daily existence along with high drama, sadness and hope ... A bittersweet and moving novel that lingers in the mind' Daily Mail 'An epic work about bravery and the power of attachment' Rose Tremain, Observer, Books of the Year 'An epic and a masterpiece' Justin Cartwright, Observer 'This novel will be a piece of luck for anyone with a long plane journey or beach holiday ahead. It is such a page-turner, entirely absorbing... magnificent' Guardian 'Doerr can bring a scene to life in a single paragraph ... Delicate and moving ... the novel takes hold and will not easily let go' The Times 'Boy meets girl in Anthony Doerr's hauntingly beautiful new book, but the circumstances are as elegantly circuitous as they can be' The New York Times 'I'm not sure I will read a better novel this year ... Enthrallingly told, beautifully written and so emotionally plangent that some passages bring tears' Washington Post 'This jewel of a story is put together like a vintage timepiece ... Doerr's writing and imagery are stunning. It's been a while since a novel had me under its spell in this fashion.' Abraham Verghese 'A dazzling, epic work of fiction. Anthony Doerr writes beautifully about the mythic and the intimate, about snails on beaches and armies on the move, about fate and love and history and those breathless, unbearable moments when they all come crashing together.' Jess Walter”

Praise for Cloud Cuckoo Land:

‘Sets him comfortably alongside Tolkien, Rowling and David Mitchell, and he is a much more elegant writer than two of those … Cloud Cuckoo Land is an impressive achievement and a joy to read. Serious novels are rarely this fun.’ The Times

‘There is a kind of book a seasoned writer produces after a big success: large-hearted, wide in scope and joyous. Following his Pulitzer winner All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land is a deep lungful of fresh air – and a gift of a novel’ Guardian

‘A paean to stories as a source of sustenance and solace, and to the sweetness of our shared terrestrial home, Doerr’s narrative is buoyant with humanity and its author’s palpable pleasure in invention’ Daily Mail

‘A humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences. Cloud Cuckoo Land is ultimately a celebration of books, the power and possibilities of reading’ New York Times

‘Cloud Cuckoo Land is a fascinatingly ambitious tale that’s worth the seven year wait’ Stylist

‘Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Doerr’s new novel traverses time and space, unifying his characters through a text written by Diogenes in the first century AD. Cloud Cuckoo Land begins there and sweeps through the millennia in a huge, imaginative arc that celebrates the outsiders, the writers and the keepers of books. An ultimately hopeful and life-affirming novel about the essence of love, literature and art’ Irish Independent

‘This is a dazzling epic of love, war and the joy of books – one for David Mitchell fans’ Guardian

‘Wonderment and despair, love and destruction and hope – all find their place in its sumptuously plotted pages’ Observer

Anthony Doerr is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, currently in development as a Netflix limited series. He is also the author of two short story collections, Memory Wall and The Shell Collector; the novel About Grace; and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, all published by 4th Estate. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Story Prize. Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.

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