At the age of twelve, Cosimo Piovasco climbs an oak tree in the family garden in a fit of rebellion and announces that he is going to spend the rest of his life in trees. Thus begins The Baron in the Trees, a novel by the brilliant Italo Calvino that has gone down in history as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century Italian literature. A true vindication of utopia. It is part of the trilogy entitled Our Ancestors, three unlikely stories in which that particular sense of humour based on the absurd flourishes and which, set in remote times and imaginary countries, deal, in short, with the same theme: freedom.