Review: The Leopard

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is actually a recommendation from an Italian friend of mine, who suggested in in a conversation about our favourite books. I noted it down and was able to hunt out the translation in fairly short order.

Mostly set in the 1860s, when the Risorgimento finally reached Sicily and the unification of Italy was finally realized, the story follows the crucial weeks in which the main chracter, Don Fabrizio, the prince of the aristocratic Salina family grapples with the collapse of the Bourbon kingdom of Sicily and Naples the new allegiance to the new Italian state, unified by the Piedmontese. In the midst of this, Don Fabrizio finds himself contending with the marriage of his favourite, but poor nephew, Tancredi, to the beautiful daughter of the nouveau riche mayor of the town nearest his rural palace, Angelica. The novel really is an exploration of the dying of the old, aristocratic dominated Italy and the birth of a new Italy, turning its back on the old. Don Fabrizio is probably the most sympathetic character, although I think the sympathy that he evokes is that of a man who realizes that he's the last of his kind, rightly so. His world is burdened by the past and he recognizes that there is nothing to save it. So, there is a real melancholy in this book and a human complexity because we realize slowly that the new Italy isn't going to be problem free either.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Its reception in the 1950s was controversial as well, infuriating both the right and the left. But I am glad I read it because it is a window to that confusing time when Italy began to reinvent itself.

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