The Roots of Heaven

The Roots of Heaven 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 interestingpolitically 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 followingsome 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. In 1956 this book exploded into the world. A huge bestseller in France it won the countrys most prestigious award the Prix Goncourt. In the U.S. it was an immediate bestseller.