Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780002614504
ISBN number: 0002614502
Label: The Harvill Press
Manufacturer: The Harvill Press
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: December 31, 1960
Publishing house: The Harvill Press
Sale Popularity Level: 2202209
Studio: The Harvill Press
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Lampedusa's masterpiece, one of the finest works of twentieth century fiction, is set amongst an aristocratic family, facing social and political changes in the wake of Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily in 1860. At the head of the family is the prince, Don Fabrizio. Proud and stubborn, he is accustomed to knowing his own place in the world and expects his household to run accordingly. He is aware of the changes which are quickly making men historically obsolete but he remains attached to the old ways. His favourite nephew, Tancredi, may be an ardent supporter of Garibaldi and may later marry outside his class, but Don Fabrizio will make few accommodations for the modern world. Containing, for the very first time in any language, the full original text, Tomasi di Lampedusa's classic tale lovingly memorialises the details of a vanishing world while retaining its melancholic and ironic sense of time passing and the frailty of human emotions.
Amazon.com Review:
The Leopard is set in Sicily in 1860, as Italian unification is coming violently into being, but it transcends the historical-novel classification. E.M. Forster called it, instead, 'a novel which happens to take place in history.' Lampedusa's Sicily is a land where each social gesture is freighted with nuance, threat, and nostalgia, and his skeptical protagonist, Don Fabrizio, is uniquely placed to witness all and alter absolutely nothing. Like his creator, the prince is an aristocrat and an astronomer, a man 'watching the ruin of his own class and his own inheritance without ever making, still less wanting to make, any move toward saving it.' Far better to take refuge in the night skies.
What renders The Leopard so beautiful, and so despairing, is Lampedusa's grasp of human frailty and his vision of Sicily's arid terrain--'comfortless and irrational, with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified at the instant when a change of wind had flung waves into frenzy.' Though the author had long had the book in mind, he didn't begin writing it until he was in his late 50s. He died at 60, soon after it was rejected as unpublishable.
Archibald Colquhoun's lyrical translation also contains 70 more precious pages of Lampedusa--a memoir, a short story, and the very first chapter of a novel. In 'Places of My Infancy' the author warns that 'the reader (who won't exist) must expect to be led meandering through a lost Earthly Paradise. If it bores him. I don't mind.' Luckily, the reader does exist; even more luckily, boredom is not an option.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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In a lot of ways this novel written in 1958 reads like Jane Austin
for me: the manners are of another time
and the customs are very much Latin.
It there a hidden policy here or just a comment on the changing of times? About the changing of the guard he say:" ... that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry." The Leopard is the symbol of the family coat of arms in which we are told that old families transform in a romance of manners to the tune of the times. We get to the end and find it was all supposed to be about the nephew Tancredi, Concetta and the vulgar new princess Angelica. The loss of fortunes on the
whim of a minute or the romance of new times, who can say.
Why was it published in the early newer era of Europe?
Rated by buyers 
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An engaging read about Sicily during a time of monumental change. The author draws you into the scenario as the characters play out their destiny. Compelling enough to make you want to explore the vistas and cities of modern Sicily.
Rated by buyers -
This novel is not just a story, not just an exercise in promotion, not just a product for the market--all of which are characteristics of so much of what is published these days. This is literature. It opens windows on the past, it explores human nature, it helps us understand ourselves and the wider world. The reflections on changes in society, on aging and the approach of death, both of a way of life and a specific individual, are enlightening and enriching. A wonderful book.
Rated by buyers 
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Story provides historical background setting at the time of the unification of Sicily to Italy under Garibaldi. It captures the transition as it affected the ruling families.
Rated by buyers -
Excellent book that takes you to the time period so thoroughly, you almost see yourself there. Great introduction to the history of Italy at the time, characters are totally believable.
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