Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is a 2021 novel following multiple different characters in several different timelines.
In 1450s Constantinople, Anna and Omeir live on either side of the siege. In 1950s Korea, Zeno is an American prisoner of war. In 2020 America, a teenager attempts a terror attack on a library. In the far future, Konstance travels through the stars.
Connecting each story is an ancient Greek text about Aethon, a man who turns from man to donkey to bird in search of a paradise in the sky.
Contains examples of:
- After the End: Implied with Konstance's story.
- Anachronic Order: Chapters rotate between six main characters over five timelines.
- Chekhov's Skill: Konstance's father taught her all about plants, comparing a coconut's germination holes to a face. Which is how she realized that a coconut tree found in a simulation of Earth was a fake generated by AI; it didn't have the germination holes.
- Doorstopper: Just over 600 pages.
- Generation Ship: The Argos. Or so it seems. Earth simply didn't have the resources to build a spaceship; the Argos is actually a sealed building in Greenland.
- Global Warming: A theme explored in Seymour's storyline, with some of the effects are shown in Konstance's.
- Humans Are Bastards: Believed by Seymour.
- Spotting the Thread:Konstance finding the owls in the Atlas, and slowly realising the truth about the Argos.
- Worst Aid: After her older sister Maria suffers a traumatic head injury, Anna desperately scrambles the money for a miracle cure in the form of blessed water... mixed with mercury and drank in a lead cup. Tragically, the cure was offered in good faith and nobody knew that she was slowly being poisoned.
