Twelve-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. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.Ĭloud Cuckoo Land follows five characters whose stories, despite spanning nearly six centuries, are bound together by their mutual love for a single book. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. This reading group guide for Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own. This is another siege.Īnd 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.Īnna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. 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. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. 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. In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople.

“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” -The Washington Postįrom 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).Īmong 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.

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

Cloud cuckoo land synopsis