Les Racines du ciel
Inscribed and signed: “Pour Georges Simon, de Romain Gary, 1956.”
Complete with the “Prix Goncourt 1956” band.
A rare copy printed on the very day of the Goncourt award, inscribed by Gary during his brief visit to France to receive the prize and respond to the flood of requests that followed. Romain Gary, who was in La Paz when the announcement was made, obtained a two-week leave from the Quai d’Orsay for the end of December 1956.
The first novel to take the protection of nature openly as its central subject, Les Racines du ciel is also — once again — a novel of resistance: “resistance to everything that oppresses man, wherever and however it may occur.” This is why Gary wrote, in December 1956, after Russian tanks entered Budapest: “The Hungarian elephants must be saved. One day they will resume their triumphant march” (Larat, Romain Gary, Une trajectoire dans le siècle, II, p. 48).
Georges Simon, a sculptor and medalist trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, engraved numerous commemorative pieces and medals.