The Roots of Heaven - by Romain Gary (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"[This book] follows Morel, a Frenchman who survives the Holocaust--a survival he credits to imagining elephants roaming the wilderness. Once free, he travels to French Equatorial Africa with the aim of saving his beloved elephants from being hunted and killed for meat and ivory. Realizing his more conventional tactics are not eliciting a response, however, he turns militant, and the story takes a dark turn. This novel examines the corrosive force of human desensitization, and it is one of the first classic ecological novels of our time" --<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><b><i>The Roots of Heaven</b></i> takes as its subject the deliberate and relentless hunting and killing of elephants for their ivory. Morel, a former dentist whose survival in a Nazi concentration camp he attributes to his fixation on the freedom and companionability of elephants, travels to Africa intent on stopping the slaughter. He circulates a petition demanding their killing be made illegal. It attracts two signers: a disgraced American from the Korean War and a call girl described as just another animal who needed protection. From here things get really interesting--politically, socially and culturally. Morel realizes that action is necessary; a notorious elephant hunter is shot in the buttocks, while a female trophy hunter is stripped naked and publicly whipped. You never teach a man anything by killing him, he observes, On the contrary you make him forget everything. He gains a following--some drawn by his cause, some by political expediency, some by a need to believe in something, anything, bigger than themselves. He is chased and cornered at Lake Kuru, where a vast assemblage of elephants has converged to drink, and where this novel concludes in a brilliant and memorable climax.<br>In 1956 this book exploded into the world. A huge bestseller in France, it won the country's most prestigious award, the <i>Prix Goncourt</i>. In the U.S. it was an immediate bestseller.</p>
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