Where Is Cloud Cuckoo Land Set In The Novel?

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Leah Thomas spans numerous timelines and geographies in a sprawling but satisfying fashion. The story about the 15th century manuscript of Odysses and the efforts of a group of individuals to save it from destruction during the siege of Constantinople is extremely physical and grounded in the space and the actions of the people in it. In contrast, the story set in contemporary Idaho about a small group of individuals who work at a library is a very gentle tale about a group of book lovers and their space of the library. The future story is set on a generational starship where humans are on their way to colonize a new planet and are carrying the same story with them.

A fable about a girl and her trip to a sky city serves as an island that the characters visit in their minds. The setting of Cloud Cuckoo Land is at once earthy and realistic (the walls of a library, a ship’s corridors) and mythical (a story within a story). The stories here are comforting in that they follow from place to place, are sustained in some form, and ultimately connect a host of humanity in the face of seemingly insurmountable space.

What makes Cloud Cuckoo Land so sprawling is that it isn’t set in one place. On the surface, it follows three major storylines that take place in three very different places. The historical part of the book is set in 15th century Constantinople on the cusp of the Ottoman siege. This part of the book feels very grounded. There are stone walls, trade routes, and people trying to keep books and stories alive as the world is changing around them.

In a separate plotline set in modern-day rural Idaho, the author focuses on the members of the tight-knit community surrounding the local library. Again and again, the ancient tale of 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' within the novel’s story is read from that book of fiction within the novel. It is cherished. It is in danger of being lost. A real story of a real place in danger of being destroyed by those who do not understand or value it—this part of the novel has great emotional resonance, as the quiet battle to preserve knowledge is so relatable.

Then the novel takes a leap to the far future to a generation ship that is traveling to a new planet that will give the human race a second chance. The same book from the past will travel with them as a memory and a moral guide. So Cloud Cuckoo Land is a historical novel, a contemporary novel and a speculative novel, all told within a framework of stories within stories. The overarching story follows a mythic quality, much like a fable. A young girl and her and her city up in the clouds traveling from place to place is the quality of the story within a story that Doerr uses to explore preservation and loss, courage and the human need to tell and hear stories. The novel left me feeling hopeful about how stories travel through time.

On a more literary note: The story takes place in three geographically distinct areas. Doerr recreates the gritty 15th-century city of Constantinople on the brink of disaster. A threatened library in a somewhat depressed American town is the social and moral center of that community. On board a spacecraft traveling to an as yet unknown planet in the future, printed words are the precious cargo of a rather Spartan community. The embedded story, ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’, is itself a mythical story about a mythical city – and it forms a thematic stratum which the three main settings of the story to some extent revolve around.

The three physical settings Doerr creates function to probe across the centuries how texts are destroyed and how they are saved; how libraries as physical as well as social structures act as memory. The embedded tale “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” a mythic story about a mythic city, also functions as a stratum, through which the other stories and their locations orbit. I really appreciated the structural rethinking of this novel, on the level of ‘place’ and how time and space are managed in it.

I was surprised by how geographically expansive ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ is. The novel is not set in one place or time, rather it spans three interlinked worlds: Constantinople during the 15th century Ottoman siege, a small Idaho town in the present day centering around a public library, and a future, star-hopping journey to a new home. Each of these worlds is concerned with survival in different ways.

The book is anchored by an ancient story called “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” which becomes a story that is read, translated, and even imagined by characters in different eras. It’s a mythic tale that becomes a sort of story-within-the-story, a single text that is passed down from generation to generation, often misremembered but always cherished. Doerr ties together all the different storylines and time and place by the libraries and the power of stories to save knowledge. I found that I wanted to re-read many parts of the book, not to reflect on the themes or messages but to re-experience the geography of the book and the way that Doerr moved his readers through time and place.