The Leopard

Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote only one book and before he died in 1957 it had been turned down by every publisher in Italy who had seen it.  When The Leopard (the Italian title is Il Gattopardo, which refers to the African ocelot, not the leopard) was finally published in 1958 it became the best selling novel in Italian history and today is regarded as one of the greatest works of modern Italian literature.  I'd heard about the book but never got around to reading it until last year and highly recommend it.

The Leopard is set in Sicily, primarily in Palermo and the surrounding region, and covers the period from 1860 to 1910.  It is the story of the decay and transformation of the Sicilian aristocracy during the period of the unification (the Risorgimento) of Italy.  Tomasi, born in 1896, knew this period well being himself the last descendant of a minor princely Sicilian family, the Lampedusa.

The book is the tale of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina and his family (and clearly owes much to the story of the Lampedusas during the same period) and its initial, and longest section, takes place in 1860 as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (comprising southern Italy and Sicily) is crumbling under the pressure of Guiseppe Garibaldi's forces and the House of Savoy (based in the north of Italy).  Don Fabrizio must choose whether to maintain his alliance with the old order or bend to the new.  One of the best known passages from the novel sums up the dilemma when Don Fabrizio's nephew Tancredi tells him "Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they'll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
 (Tomasi)
The brilliance of the novel is that it is not just a story of conflict.  It is also a beautifully written, leisurely and somewhat melancholic tour of the world of the Sicilian aristocracy.  Early on we sit in Don Fabrizio's estate office and view his domain:

"On whitewashed walls, reflected in wax-polished tiles, hung enormous pictures representing the various Salina estates; there, in bright colors, contrasting with the gold and black frame, was Salina, the island of the twin mountains, surrounded by a sea of white-flecked waves on which pranced beflagged galleons; Querceta, its low houses grouped around the rustic church on which were converging groups of bluish-colored pilgrims; Ragattisi, tucked under mountain gorges; Argivocale, tiny in contrast to the vast plains of corn dotted with hardworking peasants; Donnafugata, with its baroque palace, goals of coaches in scarlet and green and gilt, loaded with women, wine and violins; and many others, all protected by a taut reassuring sky and by the Leopard grinning between long whiskers."

Tomasi shows us the Prince of Salina's domain disintegrating under the tectonic pressures of modernization and the rise of a middle class based on business and commercial life.  As Don Fabrizio tells an interlocutor for the new Italian government who conveys to him an offer to join the new national Senate:

"I cannot accept.  I am a member of the old ruling class, inevitably compromised with the Bourbon regime, and tied to it by chains of decency if not of affection.  I belong to an unfortunate generation, swung between the old world and new, and I find myself ill at ease in both.  And what is more, as you must have realized by now, I am without illusions." 

Tomasi has a gift for writing descriptive passages that capture an atmosphere, a people and a landscape as well as portraying the thought processes of Don Fabrizio and it's well worth your time to immerse yourself in his world.

In 1963, Luchino Visconti made an epic movie of The Leopard starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.