BY KAREN BOSSICK
Boise’s Pulitzer Prize winning author Anthony Doerr will discuss his new novel, “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 14, at The Community Library.
Limited seating in the lecture hall is full, but the discussion may be viewed on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/event/1660591/213c212ce3 Or, visit https://comlib.org There will be no replay available.
The book revolves around five people who dwell in the heart of Cloud Cuckoo Land. One couple lives on opposite sides of the city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople.
A teenage idealist and octogenarian are involved in an attack on a public library in a small town in present-day Idaho. And the fifth person is on an interstellar ship bouned for an exoplanet decades from now.
All dreamers, they find hope in the midst of peril, particularly in the Greek story of Aethon who longs to be a bird so he can fly to an utopian paradise.
The story is one about stewardship—of books, our shared planet and of the human heart. It’s a book in which librarians and bookworms are the heroes. And the book was shortlisted for the National Book Award.
Doerr, a native of Cleveland, won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “All the Light We Cannot See.” He is also the author of “The Shell Collector,” “Memory Wall” and the memoir “Four Seasons in Rome.”
His short stories have won five O. Henry Prizes.