CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Anthony Doerr

“An ancient Greek manuscript connects humanity’s past, present, and future.”

cloud cuckoo land

lie low even as she’s drawn back into the web of her old profession. Meanwhile, Martin Shusterman just keeps showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Originally from suburban New York, he forges a somewhat aimless cello career that eventually takes him to Buenos Aires, where he lives with his girlfriend, Abril, until she is disappeared, an incidental casualty in Argentina’s Dirty War. Shusterman returns to New York but remains obsessed with his former Buenos Aires neighbor Karl Sauer, a former Nazi propagandist filmmaker in hiding. Shusterman’s search for Sauer brings him to Vienna, where Sauer made his films in the 1930s and ’40s. Using information from the septuagenarian daughter of one of Sauer’s leading men, Shusterman is led to the ruins of 39 Nachtfalterallee, the site of Sauer’s former offices, where a much older mystery is being unearthed. On the same site, Unna was the proprietress of a brothel in the last decades of the 1600s. Hardworking and pragmatic, she managed to survive the Ottoman siege and an outbreak of the plague while running a successful house of ill-repute. As the city suffers under the ravages of disease, poverty, and the pressing needs of refugees driven in front of the Ottoman army, Unna’s position becomes ever more tenuous. Iridia’s, Shusterman’s, and Unna’s stories—along with those of a myriad of other characters representative of the sideshows, genocides, and passing obsessions of the last five centuries or so—wind together along the slenderest spindles of happenstance, implausibly but definitively connecting through the ephemera of the objects (and skulls) they leave behind. By the final pages, the reader is simultaneously exhausted by the rigors of exposition-heavy prose and invigorated by the intellectual ambition of the author’s takes on death, time, history, and everything in between.

An ambitious novel written in sometimes overly ambitious prose, this book charms, intrigues, and bewilders.

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND

Doerr, Anthony Scribner (656 pp.) $26.99 | Sep. 28, 2021 978-1-982168-43-8

An ancient Greek manuscript connects humanity’s past, present, and future. “Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you” wrote Antonius Diogenes at the end of the first century C.E.—and millennia later, Pulitzer Prize winner Doerr is his fitting heir. Around Diogenes’ manuscript, “Cloud Cuckoo Land”—the author did exist, but the text is invented—Doerr builds a community of readers and nature lovers that transcends the boundaries of time and space. The protagonist of the original story is Aethon, a shepherd whose dream of escaping to a paradise in the sky leads to a wild series of adventures in the bodies of beast, fish, and fowl. Aethon’s story is first found by Anna in 15th-century Constantinople; though a failure as an apprentice seamstress, she’s learned ancient Greek from an elderly scholar. Omeir, a country boy of the same period, is rejected by the world for his cleft lip—but forms the deepest of connections with his beautiful oxen, Moonlight and Tree. In the 1950s, Zeno Ninis, a troubled ex–GI in Lakeport, Idaho, finds peace in working on a translation of Diogenes’ recently recovered manuscript. In 2020, 86-year-old Zeno helps a group of youngsters put the story on as a play at the Lakeport Public Library—unaware that an eco-terrorist is planting a bomb in the building during dress rehearsal. (This happens in the first pages of the book and continues ticking away throughout.) On a spaceship called the Argos bound for Beta Oph2 in Mission Year 65, a teenage girl named Konstance is sequestered in a sealed room with a computer named Sybil. How could she possibly encounter Zeno’s translation? This is just one of the many narrative miracles worked by the author as he brings a first-century story to its conclusion in 2146.

As the pieces of this magical literary puzzle snap together, a flicker of hope is sparked for our benighted world.

THE CHAOS KIND

Eisler, Barry Thomas & Mercer (445 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 1, 2021 978-1-5420-0561-6

The world keeps supplying Eisler’s franchise heroes with real-life prototypes of serial child rapists. Wealthy financier/predator Andrew Schrader was caught seven years ago importing young girls for sex to his South Carolina compound on an industrial scale. But his success in capturing so many high-level government types on video disporting themselves on the premises allowed him to grab a plea bargain to a single misdemeanor, with no jail time. Now that he’s moved to a Washington island and is back to his old tricks, assistant U.S. Attorney Alondra Diaz intends to drag him over the coals. She has the unstinting support of Seattle PD Detective Livia Lone, who has excellent reasons for going after men who prey on underage victims, and the logistical assistance of retired assassin John Rain, nonretired assassin Marvin Manus, the CIA’s Tom Kanezaki, and his helpers, tech whiz Maya and sniper Dox. It’s a formidable lineup, and it needs to be, because the same insiders who kept Schrader out of jail to save their own faces last time are even more firmly ensconced in the seats of power. U.S. Attorney General Uriah Hobbs, Director of National Intelligence Pierce Devereaux, and CIA director Lisa Rispel can command endless squads of tech-busters and hit men to keep Schrader from talking or activating the dead man’s switch that would release all those compromising videos posthumously. The heroes with the white hats would seem to be hopelessly outgunned and outspent—unless the forces arrayed against them should turn on each other.

Another high-fatality, high-spirited revenge fantasy in which most of the casualties don’t even have names.

L.A. WEATHER

Escandón, María Amparo Flatiron Books (336 pp.) $27.99 | Sep. 7, 2021 978-1-250-80256-9

Twelve pivotal months in the life of a Jewish and Catholic Mexican American family in West Los Angeles. It’s 2016. Three-year-old twins miraculously survive drowning in the first scene, setting the tone of melodrama cut with comedy that Escandón maintains throughout her homage to Mexican telenovelas. Expect financial and medical catastrophes, marital discord, sexual passion, brand name dropping, and mouthwatering meals. At center are the Alvarados. Oscar’s ancestors became landowners in California while it was still part of Mexico; artist Keila’s Jewish parents escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Mexico as children. Their heritages have merged into a seemingly idyllic marriage for almost 40 years. But recently, Oscar has retreated from involvement with his family, becoming obsessed with The Weather Channel instead. Frustrated and furious, Keila announces she wants a divorce, but the grown Alvarado daughters convince their parents to work on the marriage for one year. Meanwhile, all three daughters hide their own private problems and marital issues. Celebrity chef Claudia has a little stealing habit. Architect Olivia, who conceived her twins through in vitro fertilization, is fighting with her cartoonishly awful husband about the remaining embryos. Despite a husband in San Francisco, social media maven Patricia still lives with her parents along with the son who was conceived when she was raped at 14. As the Alvarados fight and unite repeatedly, the plot incorporates broader issues including climate change, gender politics, immigration, and a presidential election.

A warmhearted domestic drama with political undercurrents makes for fun reading.

ON THE COVER Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

A conversation about writing and ancestral journeys with the author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

BY DEESHA PHILYAW

Sydney A. Foster

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was my first writing sister. I have many cherished Black women writer friends, but Honorée was the first to call me “sister.” And if you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing Honorée’s honeyed voice, you know she bestows sister with all the love and care you could hope for. Honorée gave me my first fiction credit in a national publication when she guest-edited a special Black women’s issue of PMS poemmemoirstory in 2008. I don’t recall how I landed on her radar, but when she, a renowned poet, asked if I would send her a story, I leapt at the chance.

When my contributor copy of PMS arrived, I gawked at the contributor list. Honorée had published me among literary stars including Nikki Giovanni, Edwidge Danticat, and Honorée’s beloved mentor and friend, the poet Lucille Clifton.

As writers, as humans, we need someone to give us a chance, someone to claim us as family, to really see us. I’m continually struck by Honorée’s generosity toward fellow writers and her candor about her professional life, which has been no crystal stair, as Langston Hughes’ mama would say. But with grace and gratitude in the face of this past year’s successes, Honorée observes, “It’s only taken me 24 years of publishing to become an overnight sensation.”

As we awaited the publication of her first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper/HarperCollins, July 27), I spoke with my dear sister about writing unapologetically Black feminist fiction and the ancestral journeys that brought her most recent works (including the National Book Award–longlisted poetry collection The Age of Phillis) to fruition. Our conversation, conducted over Zoom, has been edited for length and clarity.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is an epic, in every sense of the word. It’s grand in scope, and it’s magnificent. Did you know at the outset that it would be a big novel, or did it evolve? When I began the book—late 2011, early 2012—it was supposed to be a book about Ailey’s coming-of-age, and it was going to have some serious parts, like Lydia’s drug addiction. With Ailey, I knew that she was going to be a child of the 1970s and ’80s, close to my age. I really loved her personality; she has a take-no-prisoners view of life and this hardcore sense of humor. That was the initial tone of the book. To be honest, one of my favorite books is [Melissa Bank’s] The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

Around two years into writing the book, I started having these dreams about people who lived in the 19th century. I knew immediately they were Ailey’s ancestors. At first, I was trying to make them into stories. Then I said, maybe that’s another novel. And they just kept intruding in my head. That’s when I began to try to weave the two stories together. It was really messy, and I didn’t know where I was going. Toni Morrison said she never let her characters have a life of their own. I tried not to let my characters have a life of their own, but they do.

One of the things I love about your novel is that we get to see the interior lives of multiple generations of women, sometimes at odds with one another. Were there particular myths about women’s inner lives or about intergenerational dynamics that you wanted to dispel? This is a Black feminist book, OK? I’m unashamed about that. I was very intentional about dispelling the myth that there’s such a thing as a universal woman. That doesn’t mean that women-identified individuals can’t share particular experiences. But I think that culture makes experiences very specific. Black and woman are a crossroads—what Kimberlé Crenshaw calls intersectionality.

In terms of the intergenerational dynamics, I’m really glad you noticed that. I grew up in a circle of women. I know so many other Black women that grew up in a circle of women, and that shapes us. One of the reasons that I love Belle so much is that she’s Ailey’s mother, and we see her from Ailey’s point of view. When you’re young, and you see your mom, you’re thinking she’s always been a mom. You can’t ever imagine her as a young girl, with her own dreams. You can’t understand the sort of sacrifices that she’s made. And it’s only when you get to be an older woman that you can look back and say, Oh yeah, OK. You can only really understand that when you have an intergenerational story.

The process of writing is, at its best, a process of discovery. What did you learn about yourself in writing your novel and in writing The Age of Phillis? Both of these books are ancestral journeys. I realized— probably around 2016, I was about three years out from finishing The Age of Phillis and about four years out from finishing Love Songs—that this was going to be my life’s work, attending ancestral altars. When you study the history of Black folks in this country, there’s a lot of pain. That was frightening. When I finished editing Love Songs, in the middle of the pandemic, there was a joy that I felt that I never expected to feel. There was a joy in having told the stories of these people, even as terrible as some of these stories are, because there is joy in memory. There is joy in telling what hasn’t been told before.

We’re in the middle of this whole fracas, if you will, about critical race theory. Just about every day on social media, someone’s saying, “I’m tired of reading about slavery. I’m tired of slavery movies.” It’s one thing if you decide you don’t want to hear these stories anymore. But when somebody outside of your community says you cannot know these stories, your children cannot know these stories, you get your back up, you get defensive. I feel so immensely gratified seeing younger Black people—some of whom, even six months ago, would say, “I don’t want to hear about this. Why can’t we hear about Black joy?”—rallying around the stories of our ancestors. I’m still thinking about process. When it comes to writing prose, do you outline? [Laughs.]

Oh, gosh, well, that’s my answer. Do you have a daily writing routine? I’m working on two new book projects. Whether I want to write daily or not, I have to. I say to my students, “The more you write, the more ideas come to you. It’s like a relationship.” I tell my students this, and they can’t—you know, they’re young folks. They laugh when I say “You’ve got to keep it fresh, like a relationship. You can’t just have a day or two and then disappear for six months. You’ve got to attend to the relationship, you’ve got to buy dinner.”

You’ve got to court your writing. Exactly. And then, if I may, prayer is very much a part of my writing process. I always thank my Creator for giving me new words. What we have learned, particularly in this time, is that you never know the hour or the day. I want to be writing up until the moment I leave this Earth, the way that my mentor, Lucille Clifton, was writing up until she went into the hospital for the last time.

“You never know the hour or the day.” You took me back to church with that. I’ve turned into an old Black church lady prematurely, you know?

Deesha Philyaw is the author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and other prizes. The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois received a starred review in the May 15, 2021, issue.