The Roots of Heaven.

GARY, Romain (Patrick Leigh Fermor).

$975.00

Item Number: 47063

London: Michael Joseph, 1958.

First edition in English of this novel, which was awarded France’s Prix Goncourt in 1956. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Patrick Leigh Fermor on the front free endpaper. Leigh Fermor co-wrote the screenplay for the 1958 film. Near fine in a very good dust jacket.

The Roots of Heaven is a novel by the Lithuanian-born French writer and WW II aviator, Romain Gary. It received the Prix Goncourt for fiction. 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, with the screenplay written by Patrick Leigh Fermor and Romain Gary. 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.