Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa · 1958
The Leopard
Il Gattopardo
A journey into the heart of Sicily, the Italian Risorgimento,
and the twilight of an aristocracy that knew its time had come.
In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed on the shores of Sicily with a thousand red-shirted volunteers, setting in motion the unification of Italy. In Palermo, a proud Sicilian aristocrat — Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina — watched as the world he knew crumbled around him, replaced by a new order that bore a suspicious resemblance to the old one. A century later, the last heir of that family sat down to write a novel about it.
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
— Tancredi Falconeri
That novel was The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in the final years of his life, rejected by Italy's most prestigious publisher, and released posthumously in 1958 to become one of the great works of twentieth-century literature. This site is a guide to the novel, the man who wrote it, and the history it brings to life.