Eight years after the Pulitzer Prize winner All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr returns with this epic, itself a finalist for the National Book Award. In 15th-century Constantinople, Anna discovers a tome that tells the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird. In a present-day Idaho library, elderly Zeno leads children in a play adaptation of Aethon's story, even as a bomb ticks nearby. And in a not-so-distant future, on an interstellar journey, Konstance copies out this ancient legend. With finesse and imagination, Doerr tells these intertwined tales of dreamers who do not realize that they are under siege.