Fiction First Editions Club Pick - October 2021

New York, NY: Scribner (Pub Date: September 28, 2021)

First Edition. Signed on the title page.

Fine in dust jacket.

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 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 trying to figure out the world around them: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for an exoplanet, decades from now. Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril.

An ancient text—the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky—provides solace and mystery to these unforgettable characters. Doerr has created a tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us and those who will be here after we’re gone.

Dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come,” Cloud Cuckoo Land is a hauntingly beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship—of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.

ANTHONY DOERR is the author of 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.

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Doerr returns with a deeply affecting epic. . . . [‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’] is a marvel. —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

Doerr’s first book since his Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘All the Light We Cannot See’ and even grander in conception and delivery . . . . [‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’] is a glorious golden mesh of stories that limns that the transformative power of literature and our need to both dream big and arrive back home in a world that will eventually flow on without us. Highly recommended. –LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW

Doerr builds a community of readers and nature lovers that transcends the boundaries of time and space... This is just one of the many narrative miracles worked by the author as he brings a first-century story to its conclusion in 2146. As the pieces of this magical literary puzzle snap together, a flicker of hope is sparked for our benighted world. —KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

Doerr demonstrates a singular gift for bringing these complex, fully realized characters to empathetic life in this brilliantly imagined story, which moves backward and forward in time… One of the joys of reading ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is discovering the threads that link the five characters’ lives, which ultimately cohere in ways that are simply unforgettable, as is this amazing gift of a novel. —BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW

One of the markers of a great book is that it is transformative, and I can think of no better way to describe ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ than to say it is a transformative reading experience. Epic in scope, it is the perfect book to remind us about the way storytelling is a key component to our shared human experience and uplifts our lives. ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is moving, it is adventurous, it is enlightening and just plain fun. This book truly has it all. –CASEY PROTTI, BOOKSHOP SANTA CRUZ