Synopses & Reviews
Akira Kumo miraculously survived the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. Now an eccentric couturier living in Paris, he has the worlds largest collection of literature on clouds and meteorology, which he hires Virginie Latour to catalog. As they work, he tells her the stories of those who have devoted their lives to clouds: the English Quaker who first classified clouds, the painter who became obsessed with capturing clouds on canvas, and the wealthy late-nineteenth-century amateur meteorologist Richard Abercrombie, a photographer who may have created the only definitive catalog of cloudsbut only one copy exists, and it has never been seen. Kumo sends Virginie to London to track down the fabled
Abercrombie Protocol, a quest both surprising and wondrous, where love, like clouds, forms and transforms lives.
Sensual, hypnotic, deeply erotic, The Theory of Clouds is a novel of cloudsboth historical and imaginativeand how they shape our passions, our storms, and our stories.
Review
"Slyly fabulist in the manner of Paul Auster, and expressing great feeling for life and scorn for arrogance, Audeguy's witty, erotic, and expansive novel subtly contrasts humankind's love for nature and pursuit of scientific knowledge with our thoughtless pillaging of the living world and tragic habit of war." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Unconventional and memorable." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This is an extraordinary bit of fiction....An exquisite, eccentric read." Baltimore Sun
Review
"[A] novel of great ambition. It may be read simply for the stories of its many characters....But it is as intricately plotted as any thriller, with gems skillfully embedded throughout." South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Synopsis
A kira Kumo, miraculous survivor of Hiroshima, reinvented himself as someone twenty years younger. Now an eccentric couturier and collector of all literature having to do with clouds and meteorology, he hires Virginie, a young librarian, to catalog his library. While she works, he tells her stories of those who have devoted their lives to clouds: the Quaker Luke Howard, contemporary of Napoleon and Goethe, who first classified clouds; the painter Carmichael (based on John Constable), who spent a year painting clouds; and the mysterious Abercrombie, a photographer who cataloged clouds around the world. Virginie's trip to London in search of the suppressed Abercrombie protocol becomes a quest no less wondrous and strange than Kumo's own. Sensual, hypnotic, and filled with stories both true and fanciful, The Theory of Clouds is a masterful first novel.
Synopsis
The novel tells the story of Akira Kumo, a retired couturier living in Paris, owner of the world's largest collection of books about clouds, and Virginie Latour, whom Kumo hires to help catalogue his library. While they work he tells her the story behind three figures in particular, all British, all obsessed by clouds: Luke Howard, a real-life Quaker who in 1802 wrote the first treatise classifying clouds (we still use it today); a painter named Carmichael, clearly based on John Constable, one of the most famous cloud painters of all time, and a fictional amateur meteorologist named Richard Abercrombie, who aspires to write the definitive book on cloud description, which would come to be known in cloud circles as the Abercrombie Protocol. Kumo sends Virginie Latour to London to buy the Protocol. By the end of the novel, we learn the Protocol's great secret; we understand what binds these men together; and and we learn that Kumo himself is a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, in whose cloud his family vanished.
About the Author
Stephane Audeguy lives in Paris, where he teaches the history of cinema and arts.
Table of Contents
Contents
part i
The Study of the Skies 1
part ii
Toward Other Latitudes 89
part iii
The Abercrombie Protocol 179