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A girl living in Constantinople at the time of its fall to the Ottomans, a teen boy with a cleft palate living in Bulgaria at that same time; a man living in Idaho who was taken a prisoner during the Korean War and then freed to return to his small town; a loner teen boy with sensory and anxiety issues led to plant a bomb in the library in that same small town in Idaho; a girl traveling deep in space on a ship bound for a distant planet. All these characters are connected by one story, written on an ancient manuscript in Greek, about Aethon, a man who hears of a paradise in the sky populated by birds. He longs to be turned into a bird so he can go there, and he ends up taking a roundabout route to achieve that goal.
Orphan Anna lives with her sister in Constantinople, making a meager living embroidering robes for priests. Curious and headstrong, Anna manages to learn to read, and she comes into possession of the story of Aethon. Omeir and his mother, sister and grandfather are shunned by the village where he was born because of his birth defect and live in isolation in the mountains. But because of the strong oxen he has raised from their infancy, he’s conscripted with them to serve in the sultan’s army as it lays siege to the great city of Constantinople.
Zeno, who learned Greek while a prisoner of war, is translating the story of Aethon and helping five children put it on as a play at the town library in 2020. Seymour has decided to plant a bomb to make a point about environmental issues.
And a few decades into the future, Konstance ends up alone in a sealed room on the spaceship Argos. She has only a cyber library to keep her busy, and within it she discovers the background of the story of Aethon, which her father had told her. She’s busy writing it down on scraps of sacking.
The book hops between the story itself, as translated by Zeno, and the various viewpoints of the characters in their particular times and places. For much of the book, I was only mildly invested in their stories, and not a lot in the simple tale of Aethon. But it eventually gathered strength and the stories ran along similar tracks; some of them merged; some overlapped. I wasn’t sure how it was going to come together, and I felt myself delighted and impressed by how it did, and on how many levels. For a while, I expected I’d merely say I admired the author for what he had come up with, but then I genuinely found it lovely and wise and clever.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a paean to the love of books and the power of story. It is a reminder to take care of our planet; for much of it, I was of the opinion it was another high-handed harangue urging readers to get it together, but I was also pleasantly surprised by its more nuanced (and human) message. It reads somewhat slowly at times, but I love how all the pieces fit together so cleverly and poignantly. My Kindle version had a readers guide at the end with thoughts for discussion, and I agree it would make a good pick for a book club.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes four uses of strong language, around five instances of moderate profanity, a few uses of mild language, and a few instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes a few brief vulgar references and some brief mentions about girls being taken in war to be used. Violence includes scenes of war, a man roughly handling a teen girl and allowing her head to strike a stairstep.
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