The Leopard

NOW A MAJOR BBC DRAMATISATION FOR RADIO 4 – AVAILABLE ON BBC SOUNDSThis is the new, revised edition which includes recently discovered new material including letters and diary entries by the author and two additional sections of the novel.

The Leopard is a modern classic which tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.

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.

‘Every once in a while, like certain golden moments of happiness, infinitely memorable, one stumbles on a book or a writer, and the impact is like an indelible mark. Lampedusa’s The Leopard, his only novel, and a masterpiece, is such a work’ Independent

INCLUDES RECENTLY DISCOVERED NEW MATERIAL

‘There is a great feeling of opulence, decay, love and death about it’ Rick Stein

Author Biography

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was a Sicilian nobleman, Duke of Parma and Prince of Lampedusa. He was born in Palermo in 1896 and died in Rome in 1957. He lived the life of a literary dilettante, was familiar with the great literatures of the world, and was widely travelled. Much of Lampedusa’s other work is collected in The Siren and Other Writings (Harvill).