Roots of the Sky

The famous French classic Romain Gary is a two-time winner of the Goncourt Prize. He refused to accept the second one for the book "All the Living Ahead," published under the pseudonym Émile Ajar. But he received his first and... most important Goncourt for "Roots of the Sky," arguably the first "ecological" novel in history, published in 1956, when the word "ecology" was still little known. Gary chose Africa as the setting, where he served during World War II in the aviation of the "Free France." A former prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp named Morel arrives in Chad to fight against the shooting of elephants. Soon he gathers like-minded people from different countries, including a German girl named Minna, who experienced violence and the loss of her loved one during the war. Seeing the futility of appeals and petitions, Morel and his companions move to action: they attack hunters and burn their plantations. The authorities throw all their forces into capturing the rebels, but Morel remains elusive... The novel, where the protection of nature gradually becomes the protection of humans and their right to exist, is full of bitterness and incredible optimism.