Cloud Cuckoo Land

Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner 2021

I read “All The Light We Cannot See” by the same author previously.  Many people liked that book so much.  It even won the Pulitzer prize.  It was a book about children, and this is a book about children.

I am probably one of the very few people who “did not like” All The Light We Cannot See.  Perhaps, “did not like” are not the correct words.  I “liked” the book.  I would give it 4 stars.  But, there were few places in the book I felt annoyed.  I felt that the author was not accurate with historical events.

Many people like this book too.  But I do not feel that way.  It is possible that that annoyance I felt from reading his “All the light” book was with me when I started reading this book.  I do not feel good or bad about this book.  But in the end, it feels like reading it was a waste of my time.

Annoyingly, I found more falsehood in this book as well.  I will include one such incident in this note.

He states in page 349 “… cricket players in Delhi vomiting from Chinese air pollution”.  That sounded far-fetched.  So, I checked.

It was Suranga Lakmal of Sri Lanka who vomited on the field during one of the Sri Lanka vs India test matches in Delhi due to heavily polluted air in the stadium in December 2017.  (Apparently, Mohammad Shami and Lahiru Gamage were also affected by the air pollution.) It is known that it is during the winter that pollution reaches severe levels.  One Indian newspaper reported that concentrations of the most harmful airborne pollutants in Delhi, one of the world’s most polluted capitals, hit 384—15 times the World Health Organization maximum—before returning to the levels considered just “unhealthy”.

Another Indian newspaper listed the top 8 main causes for air pollution in Delhi.  

(1) Approximately 35 million tonnes of crop are set afire in neighboring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.  The wind carries all the pollutants and dust particles.

(2) Pollution caused by the traffic menace in Delhi.

(3) As the winter season sets in, dust particles and pollutants in the air become unable to move, resulting in smog.

(4) Overpopulation in Delhi.

(5) Investing less on public infrastructure.

(6) Large scale construction in Delhi-National Capital Region.

(7) Industrial pollution and garbage dumps.

(8) Over use of firecrackers.