The Baron in the Trees

One act of childhood defiance becomes a lifelong experiment in freedom.

From the age of twelve, Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò makes his home among ash, elm, magnolia, plum and almond, living high in the trees.

He walks along paths made from twisted olive branches, makes his bed in a holly oak, bathes in a fountain constructed from poplar bark and keeps an aerial library of the books with which he educates himself in philosophy and mathematics.

Suspended among the leaves, Cosimo encounters bandits and pirates, conducts a passionate love affair and watches the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Napoleon pass beneath him.

The Baron in the Trees is a classic literary fable about independence, imagination and political idealism. Playful, philosophical and wonderfully inventive, Italo Calvino’s novel turns one boy’s act of defiance into a lifelong experiment in freedom.

'I can think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, Britain burns, while the world ends' Salman Rushdie

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