The Private Lives of Trees tells the story of a single night: a young professor of literature named Julin is reading to his step-daughter Daniela and nervously waiting for his wife Vernica to return from her art class. Each night, Julin has been improvising a story about trees to tell Daniela before she goes to sleep, and each Sunday he works on a novel about a man tending to his bonsai, but something about this night is different. As Julin becomes increasing concerned that Vernica wont return, he reflects on their life together in minute detail, and imagines what Danielaat twenty, at twenty-five, at thirty years old, without a motherwill think of his novel. Perhaps even more daring and dizzying than Zambras magical Bonsai, The Private Lives of Trees demands to be read in a single sitting, and it casts a spell that will bring you back to it again and again.