藍貝托男爵老邁多病,卻因有人日夜念著他的名字,奇蹟似地一天天好轉。但一場關於財富、陰謀與二十四名強盜的鬧劇也隨之展開。義大利童話大師羅達利以幽默筆觸,帶來一則荒誕卻耐人尋味的現代寓言。From Gianni Rodari, the father of modern Italian children’s literature, comes a pithy, humorous tale about life and death, health and wealth . . . and bandits and balloons! A refreshed translation from Batchelder Award–winner Antony Shugaar, illustrated with all-new art from Roman Muradov“Gianni Rodari gave free rein to his imagination, with inspired panache and gleeful lightness. At the same time, he had a precise and meticulous love for detail, for rich and exact language, and so all of his inventions are set in a very concrete world with real form and action.” —Italo CalvinoBaron Lamberto is very old, very rich, and very sick. He lives in a villa on a private island in the middle of Lake Orta, tended to by his trusty butler, Anselmo, who keeps track of the baron’s 24 maladies, 24 banks, and endless eccentricities. After a mysterious trip to Egypt, the baron hires six people to take up residen