A scene from Aristophanes’s *The Birds,* at St. Ann’s Warehouse, in Brooklyn. *Cloud Cuckoo Land,* Anthony Doerr’s latest novel, is a reference to *The Birds’* Utopia.

Back to the Future

By Jenny McPhee

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

A translation of an ancient Greek farce. A public library in Idaho under siege by a teenage eco-terrorist. A spaceship speeding across the galaxy in search of a livable planet. The latest from Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See) is a tour de force of a novel spanning centuries, geographies, and genres, at once recalling Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

The 600-plus-page Cloud Cuckoo Land, composed of a series of highly consumable short chapters, is a mega-mash-up weaving a vastly intricate web across space and time to reveal the interconnectedness of all things. It’s a literary salon to which all manner of storytellers and readers are invited.