The book is one of her only possessions, and she keeps it with her as she escapes. As the city falls under attack, she flees. She has been taught to read and begins to read the story to her sister. Water, mold, animals, and time have taken away most of the words. The ruin is an ancient monastery, and the papers that she finds are almost completely ruined. Anna, a young girl in Constantinople in the 1450’s, discovers bundles of old papyrus in an abandoned ruin. Now that you know who Antonius Diogenes is, replace The Wonders Beyond Thule with Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is that “pang” from which Cloud Cuckoo Land rises. ![]() It is lost to time.įor writers and readers alike, the thought of a great novel being lost to time sends a pang right into one’s heart. There are no copies known on Earth, and there have not been for centuries. TLDR: Nothing exists of Diogenes’ Thune except a synopsis written 600 years later, and a few scraps of damaged papyrus. And his last book won a Pulitzer so that’s saying something. Two other ancient works reference Thune as a historical source, but offer little clue about the novel’s content.Īll of this information about Diogenes is so obscure that the only reference on the author’s Wikipedia page is a guide to Greek literature written in 1870. Using his synopsis, historians have pieced together several pieces of the plot. At the point he writes it, historians believe that the book is over 600 years old. According to Phobius, the novel is an epic journey with graceful descriptions, clarity, and vivid narration. In this Myriobiblos, he provided a synopsis of Thune. Stick with me and you will not be disappointed. An ambitious novel deserves an ambitious review. Most of the information I found just made me more and more impressed with what Doerr did here. Yes, I had to study some ancient Greek literature. Then I thought – do I really want to review this book? And again, I decided that I should. The three situations weave together as each character is touched by the story told in the old manuscript, “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” by Antonius Diogenes.Įvery once in a while, you come across a beast of a novel and wonder, should I stick with this? This was one of those novels for me. Finally, Konstance, a girl on the ship that has left earth in search of a new planet 592 years away, is calmed when her father tells her of the land in the sky where the birds live among golden buildings and unlimited food stores. ![]() A group of children put on a play called “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in 2020 Idaho. A girl named Mary smuggles the pages out of town as she flees the invasion. An ancient, stained manuscript is found weeks before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a literary tribute to the precarious life of books.
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