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Find every Tuesday a story, interview or portrait related to a sci-fi text that’s making the news. Today, an interview with American author Anthony Doerr about his fifth book, City of Clouds and Birds, a sprawling manuscript odyssey from antiquity to the distant future, an ode to reading and climatic dystopia.
Idaho author Anthony Doerr’s latest novel takes you on a long and ambitious journey that is sometimes difficult to follow in the early days. Its thread, an ancient manuscript, connects five eras and characters, an elixir of life and imagination in times of war, loneliness and exile. Maintenance.
What is the first idea of the novel?
From my visit to Saint-Malo, a city surrounded by two kilometers of ramparts, which has already inspired me All the light we can’t see (Pulitzer Prize, Albin Michel, 2015). Most of the books on the history of the walls refer to the books of Constantinople. They stood for 1100 years and withstood 23 sieges. I put a 15th century painting of his walls above my desk. Its walls allowed the Byzantine Empire to accumulate wealth (furs, amber, gold, etc.) including books in monastic, imperial, and private libraries. And in the 15th century, the new technology of gunpowder was created, then the printing press, the compass and the sextant. I thought of this beginning of the story as a parallel between walls and books, with a little girl in the middle saving a very old manuscript.
Why imagine surviving a Greek manuscript?
About 75% of Greek manuscripts have survived thanks to Constantinople. amount of…