Leopard - Softcover

Di Lampedusa, Giuseppe

4.01

36,804 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380003775 ISBN 13: 9780380003778

Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Mass Market, 1980

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STATED FIRST PRINTING. Sept. 1961 Signet mass market paperback, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa (The Professor and the Siren). In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them. - Amazon

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About the Author:

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was born on 23rd December 1896. He was the last in a line of minor princes in Sicily. He inherited the titles of the Duke of Palma and Prince of Lampedusa. He was brought up in Palermo but moved to Rome in 1915 where he was drafted into the army and fought at the Battle of Caporetto. He was captured and held in a Hungarian Prisoner of War Camp from which he later escaped. In 1932 he married Alexandra Wolff Stomersee. He died on 3rd July 1957. The Leopard was published posthumously in 1958 and won the Premio Strega in 1959.

Review:

'Sicily 1860: Prince Fabrizio has always lived contentedly with the lovely mute ghostsA" of the past. But now, with the impending unification with Italy and his nephew's undesirable marriage, he fears ruin. This is a beautiful meditation on change, with Sicily and its golden landscape in the starring role. Brilliant.' - Rachel Redford, The Observer The Top Audiobooks of 2009: 'David Horovitch's voice, rich in timbre and sepia in tone, is wonderfully paired with this masterpiece, a tale of degeneration and ruin. Like the declining House of Salina itself, Horovitch's presentation possesses a certain 'shabby grandeur' that acquires a suitably obnoxious edge in conveying the vulgarity and ruthlessness of those who are tearing down the old order with the help of upstart money, main chance and relentless ambition.' - Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post In his bougainvillea-covered villa five hours by cart from Palermo, Prince Fabrizio faces change, even annihilation, as Garibaldi is about to hand over the whole of the Two Sicilies to King Victor Emmanuel to make a united Italy. The Prince meditates on change and growing older, seeing his future only too clearly with 'beslobbered pillows and a pot under the bed'. Nevertheless the sensuous whole sparkles with colour and imagery: the 'tyrannous sun', the 'yellow cheeks' of peaches, the dogs 'as passive as bailiffs'. Every listening yields more. Wonderful. - Rachel Redford, The Oldie Even through the most active scenes, David Horovitch always projects a hint of the elegiac tone that suffuses this novel. Published in 1958, Lampedusa's story recounts the changes in Sicilian culture that took place during the violent Italian unification of the mid-1800s. Listeners, many of whom might know nothing of mid-18th-century Sicily, will feel the strains of change - the one constant aspect of history. Most of the book is told from point of view of Fabrizio, a nobleman, and Horovitch's voice makes him gruff and cultured, noble with an edge of barbarism. We feel the prince's conflict between his love of his own past and his appreciation for the possibilities of the newly unified Italy. - D.M.H., AudioFile

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