Cloud Cuckoo Land is the story of five characters spanning eight centuries. Anna is a young seamstress living in Constantinople in the 15th century. The Ottoman army conscripts village boy Omeir is they prepare to take the city. Zeno, in the present, a Korean War veteran, works in a library in Idaho translating Ancient Greek texts. At the same time, Seymour, a disturbed autistic youngster, becomes caught up with a group of eco-terrorists. Konstance, in the 22nd century, is a young girl aboard the Argos, a generation starship heading for a planet called Beta Oph2.
An ancient Greek codex entitled Cloud Cuckoo Land binds them together. A second-century Greek writer, Antonius Diogenes, penned the codex. The codex tells the story of Aethon, a shepherd on a quest to find the fabled Cloud Cuckoo Land in the sky. In Diogenes' travels, he is transformed into a donkey, a sea bass, and finally, a crow. As a crow, he can fly to the gates of the city in the clouds.
