The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary

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.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.

The 1176th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (The Book)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
With Roots in Heaven: One Woman's Passionate Journey into the Heart of her Faith Paperback 1167836 $32.41 $1.81 1999
Stairway to Heaven: the Spiritual Roots of Rock 'N' Roll Paperback 1870090 $42.98 $34.75 1986
On Earth As It Is In Heaven: The Cosmic Roots of the Bible Paperback 3508863 $23.97 $13.99 2009
With Roots in Heaven: One Woman's Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith Hardcover 1749705 $38.83 $1.16 1998
With Roots in Heaven : One Woman's Passionate Journey into the Heart of her Faith Paperback 6402412 $59.12 $3.71 1999
ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, The Cosmic Roots of the Bible Kindle Edition 1818545 2009
Heaven, Heroes and Happiness: The Indo-European Roots of Western Ideology Paperback 3667793 $81.79 $2.50 1995
Las raices del cielo / The Roots of Heaven (Spanish Edition) Paperback 11339761 $12.68 $15.00 2008
Las Raices Del Cielo/ The Roots of the Sky (Spanish Edition) Paperback 20836906 $663.73 1999
The Roots of Heaven Paperback 234265 $13.18 $10.26 2018