Novel
The Baron in the Trees
Il barone rampante
Italo Calvino · 1957
Synopsis
On 15 June 1767, in the family villa at Ombrosa, on the Ligurian Riviera, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, twelve years old, refuses a dish of snail soup, quarrels with his father and climbs a holm oak in the garden, swearing never to touch the ground again. Narrated by his brother Biagio, the novel follows his life in the trees: he hunts there, reads there, talks to the people below and takes part in the life of the country, while the Enlightenment and revolutions go by.
Context
The novel appeared with Einaudi in 1957. It forms the second part of a trilogy of philosophical tales, between “Le Vicomte pourfendu” and “Le Chevalier inexistant”, which the author gathered in 1960 under the title “I nostri antenati”. Juliette Bertrand translated it into French at Le Seuil, then Martin Rueff at Gallimard in 2018, at the request of the rights holders; in English, Archibald Colquhoun translated it in 1959 and Ann Goldstein in 2017, under the same title, “The Baron in the Trees”.
Who it is for
A short novel, in the tone of a philosophical tale, which can be read on its own even though it belongs to a trilogy.
Prizes and reception
It received the Viareggio Prize in 1957 and ranks among its author's best-selling books.
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