Head in the Clouds

Fifteen-year-old Ruben dreams of an ordinary life — until a fatal accident forces him to run and launches him into a wildly unpredictable journey across a surreal, ever-shifting world. Along the way, he encounters unforgettable characters: a blind girl obsessed with cinema, a charming con artist promising America, a self-proclaimed baron ruling over a crumbling domestic kingdom, and an aviator who descends from the sky carrying the mystery of lost worlds.

As Ruben drifts from one adventure to the next, taking on strange jobs and impossible schemes in the hope of reaching his uncle in America, he discovers that beneath the chaos and absurdity of life lie the deepest questions about identity, belonging, and hope. Bursting with imagination, humor, poetry, and emotional depth, Head in the Clouds is a dazzling picaresque coming-of-age novel and a cult classic that defies age and genre. Dreams collapse, certainties vanish, and yet life always finds a way to rise again.

Head in the Clouds by Susanna Tamaro was first published in 1989 by Marsilio Editori. It was also a finalist for the Premio Calvino and Premio Rapallo Carige and won the Premio Elsa Morante for a debut work.

“I wrote Head in the Clouds in 1985, when I was twenty-eight years old. Many people believe it was my first book, but that is not actually true. I wrote my very first book at twenty-three, and three others followed. Of those three, I wrote, reread, and threw two into the trash. Head in the Clouds is therefore my fifth book, but the first one I managed to publish.

That was not its original title. In its first version it was called La dormeuse électronique, and it was perhaps a hundred pages longer than the published edition. Of all my books, it is the most unusual, the hardest to classify. It is a hybrid book. It does not seem meant for children, nor does it seem meant for adults. It tells a great many foolish stories and, hidden among those foolishnesses, conceals the great questions of life.“