Lampedusa: A Novel - Hardcover

Price, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374212244 ISBN 13: 9780374212247

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Synopsis

Like Colm Tóibín’s The Master or Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a novel about art and writing in the life of one of the greats

Set in a sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Steven Price’s Lampedusa explores the final years of Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, as he struggles to complete his only novel, The Leopard.

In 1955, Tomasi was diagnosed with advanced emphysema; shortly after, he began work on a novel that would fail to be published before his death four years later. When The Leopard at last appeared, it won Italy’s Strega Prize and became the greatest Italian novel of the century.

Adhering intensely to the facts of Tomasi's life but moving deep into the mind of the author, Lampedusa inhabits the complicated interior of a man facing down the end of his life and struggling to make something of lasting worth while there is still time.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Price is the author of By Gaslight. His first collection of poems, Anatomy of Keys, won Canada's 2007 Gerald Lampert Award for Best First Collection, was short-listed for the BC Poetry Prize, and was named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. His first novel, Into That Darkness, was short-listed for the 2012 BC Fiction Prize. His second collection of poems, Omens in the Year of the Ox, won the 2013 ReLit Award. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with his family.

Review

“Price vividly recreates an Italy transitioning from postwar austerity to the beginnings of La Dolce Vita, juxtaposing crumbling palazzos with sleek, supercharged sports cars... Readers will savor this rich look at Italian history.”
―Publishers Weekly

“A lyrical and sensitive portrait of a man nearing the end of his life.”
―KIRKUS Reviews

“Price’s imaginative reconstruction of Tomasi’s work avoids hagiography and humanizes a literary master, while also depicting the agony and urgency of writing.”
―Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0374212244
• ISBN 13: 9780374212247
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336