The Baron in the Trees
by Italo Calvino(1957)
Novelc. 250 pages
“It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for the last time.”
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One great work, every day
by Italo Calvino(1957)
“It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for the last time.”
Italo Calvino(1957)
Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, twelve years old, climbs into the trees to escape a dinner of snails and vows never to come down. He keeps his vow for the rest of his life, participating in the Enlightenment, the Napoleonic Wars, and love affairs, all while moving from branch to branch. Calvino's fable is about freedom, about obstinacy, about living according to principle in a world that finds such commitment absurd. The prose is light, the invention inexhaustible. The baron is a philosopher in the canopy, proving that you can refuse the ground and still live a full life.