The Roots of Heaven (novel)

The Roots of Heaven (French: Les Racines du ciel) is a 1956 novel by the Lithuanian-born French writer and WW II aviator, Romain Gary (born Roman Kacew). It received the Prix Goncourt for fiction and was translated into English in 1957.[1]

The Roots of Heaven
1956 French edition
AuthorRomain Gary
Original titleLes Racines du ciel
TranslatorJonathan Griffin
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Set inFrench Equatorial Africa, 1955
PublisherÉditions Gallimard
Publication date
5 October 1956
Published in English
1958
Pages510
843.9

Set in French Equatorial Africa, the book is the story of a crusading environmentalist, Morel, who labors to preserve elephants from extinction, but which narrative is actually a metaphor for the quest for salvation for all humanity. He is assisted in the task by Minna, a nightclub hostess, and Forsythe, a disgraced British military officer seeking redemption.

John Huston directed and Darryl Zanuck produced a 1958 Hollywood film with the same title based on the novel. It was actually shot in the malaria-infested Belgian Congo and starred Trevor Howard as Morel, Errol Flynn as Forsythe, and Juliette Gréco as Minna, with a cameo by Orson Welles that was filmed in a Parisian studio.

See also

References
  1. "Le Palmarès". academie-goncourt.fr (in French). Académie Goncourt. Retrieved 2011-12-16.
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