The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

The only novel of a scion of Sicilian aristocracy, published posthumously because, famously, no one would publish it in his lifetime, ranks among my all-time favorite works.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa fully inhabits the world he describes in The Leopard, a world of both change and timelessness, a world deep with melancholy. I first read this in my late 20’s and thought it exquisitely rich; now, at 58, I find it even more so.  A common comment on this work is that the reader never wants it to end, but, of course, the ending is the point.  In Don Fabrizio, the Sicilian Prince of Salina, we witness the slow decline from vigor and sensuality to helplessness and decrepitude.  It is a most sad elegy, brilliantly told through the eyes of an aging Prince of a parched and dusty realm.  To read this homage to patriarchy - published in 1958 - in 2019 may seem hopelessly anachronistic, but read it for the language, for the achingly beautiful descriptiveness, for the sense, on paper, of time's inevitable passing.