El barón rampante

When he was twelve years old, Cosimo Piovasco, Baron de Rondò, in an act of rebellion against the rigid family discipline, climbed up an oak tree in the garden of his father's house. That same day, June 15, 1767, he met the daughter of the Marquises of Ondarivia and announced her intention to never come down from the trees. From then until the end of his life, Cosimo remains true to that principle. From the end of the 18th century to the dawn of the 19th century, the baron participated both in the French Revolution and in the Napoleonic invasions, but without ever abandoning that necessary distance that allows him to be inside and outside of things at the same time. In this splendid work, an authentic adventure novel brimming with poetic and fantastic humour, Calvino confronts what he himself declared to be his true narrative theme: "A person voluntarily sets a difficult rule for himself and follows it to its ultimate consequences. , since without her he would not be himself neither for himself nor for others".