The Leopard - (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

NOW A NETFLIX SERIES - In this powerful novel, an aristocratic family grapples with societal upheaval and personal struggles against the backdrop of sweeping historical change.

This beautiful hardcover edition, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, also includes two short stories and a brief memoir of the author's childhood.

"A majestic, melancholy, and beautiful novel."--The New Yorker - "A masterwork . . . A superb novel."--Newsweek

In 1860s Sicily, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, remains skeptical and stoic as he faces civil war and his family's loss of wealth and status. The prince's favorite nephew, Tancredi, who opportunistically supports the unification efforts, marries Angelica, a beautiful woman from a lower social class, to secure his future. This marriage symbolizes the shifting social order and the decline of the aristocracy. As Don Fabrizio struggles to adapt, he retreats into his love of astronomy, finding solace in the unchanging stars while his world crumbles around him. Ultimately, he must decide to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the last in a line of Sicilian princes, drew inspiration from his own family's decline to write this novel in the 1950s. The dramatic sweep and richness of Lampedusa's observation, his seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and his sure grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with beauty and power.

"No novel in Italian literature has aroused so much passion or caused so much argument... The book is more than the memorable invocation of a certain place in a certain epoch. It is a work of art that will survive, long after the last sad palaces of Palermo have gone, because it deals with the central problems of the human experience." --from the Introduction by David Gilmour

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

About the Author

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was born in Palermo, Italy in 1896. With the commencement of the First World War he found himself fighting in the battle of Caporetto, from which he was captured and taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarian army. He eventually escaped and returned to Italy. Although he did produce other works, he is most known for his novel The Leopard.