CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Anthony Doerr

I adored this, loved it, every single one of its 626 pages. The imagination, the historical detail, the scope, the extent of epochs from ancient Greece to outer space. And the characters - the diverse, interesting, intricate people the author has created, and how they continually evolve and develop through the narrative. It 's a fantastic achievement. I couldn't put this done. It's immersive, complex, full of suspense. No wonder it took the author ten years to write. And he had the wonderful All the Light We Cannot See on his tail, no  doubt pressuring him to either match or do better. 

I barely know where to start with describing the plot. At its core is a fable about a humble shepherd on a journey, in search of what it thinks is a better life, written by the ancient Greek (made-up) philosopher Antonius Diogenes. This thread that travels through the whole story is similar to the very famous modern parable  of The Alchemist.  Around this tale are the stories of five other characters at various times in history. First up is Anna, an orphaned  teenage girl, who with her older sister, is struggling to survive in 15th century Constantinople. The Ottomans are descending on Constantinople, which young oxherd Oemir, has been forced to join. In the present day we meet Seymour, a young man, a damaged loner who has been radicalised and is now on a mission to blow up the local library. Inside the library is the elderly Zeno, himself damaged by what life has thrown at him, but still looking up and out. Lastly, we go to the future, to the life of a young girl called Konstance, who lives with her parents in some sort of space station, along with hundreds of others, zooming through space to a distant planet where life as it was on a now decimated Earth will begin again. 

It is a marvellous, triumphal, exhilarating read. Somehow all these threads are linked and worked together like magic to create this fabulous book. If I could give more than 5 stars I would.