Editions

The Baron in the Trees

The Baron in the Trees

RELEASED 01/04/2021

A gorgeous new edition of a playful, romantic fable by one of the twentieth century's master storytellers.

From the age of twelve, the Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo makes his home among ash, elm, magnolia, plum and almond, living up in the trees. He walks through paths made from the twisted branches of olive, makes his bed in a holly oak, bathes in a fountain constructed from poplar bark. An aerial library holds the books with which he educates himself in philosophy and mathematics. Suspended among the leaves, the Baron adventures with bandits and pirates, conducts a passionate love affair, and watches the Age of Enlightenment pass by beneath him.

'The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists' The Times

Reviews

  • Reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have always known, except that you've never thought of it before.This is highly unnerving: fortunately you're usually too busy laughing to go mad... I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends

    Salman Rushdie

  • Breathtakingly inventive

    David Mitchell

  • The most magically ingenious of the contemporary Italian novelists

    The Times

  • Calvino is a wizard

    New York Review of Books

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About the Author

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include Cosmicomics (1968), Invisible Cities (1972), and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979). He died in Siena in 1985.

Italo Calvino

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