The Cloud Rider

A bored boy. A talking forest. A cake that wants to be eaten.

Kemal is spending another endless summer in his aunt’s sleepy seaside town, where every day repeats the one before. Then a wave drags him under and drops him onto a stage in the middle of a painting contest, in front of a hundred talking animals who have just watched his fall happen in paint.

They call him the Cloud Rider. He just wants to go home. But in this forest, nothing is simple:

• A robot follows him for hours, asking, “What is my purpose?”
• A depressed ostrich can’t decide whether she’s a camel or a bird.
• A village sends every decision to a committee, including the decision of which committee to ask.
• And at the Idea-Eater Panda’s café, a perfect idea earns you a perfect cake that looks up at you and says, “Eat me. I’m complete.”

Chasing a key he glimpsed in a painting, Kemal must work out what is real, what is true, and whether he still wants to wake up.

Funny, strange and quietly philosophical, The Cloud Rider is a short fable for grown-up readers who loved The Little Prince, Alice in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth.