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The Leopard: Revised and with new material (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa , Archibald Colquhoun
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Book Description

6 Sep 2007 Vintage Classics

INCLUDES RECENTLY DISCOVERED NEW MATERIAL

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.

(20021018)

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The Leopard: Revised and with new material (Vintage Classics) + The Leopard [1963] [DVD]
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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics (6 Sep 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099512157
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099512158
  • Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 1.4 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

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 )

Perhaps the greatest novel of the century (L.P. Hartley )

One of the great lonely books...not a historical novel, but a novel which happens to take place in history (E.M. Forster )

The poetry of Lampedusa's novel flows into the Sicilian countryside...a work of great artistry (Peter Ackroyd )

I was astounded by the power of the writing (Corin Redgrave )

Book Description

This 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.


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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
98 of 100 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Small but perfectly formed 26 Feb 2005
Format:Hardcover
I think this may be the nearest thing to a perrfect novel. It's set in Sicily around the time of the '100 days' - the beginning of Garibaldi's campaign to unite Italy (and extend the franchise along the way). The central character is an aging aristocrat. He is at once admirable, contemptible and pitiable. He is more aware than his peers that the power of his class is crumbling, along with his own previously formidable powers. His loyalty - to his family, his class, and a king whom he personally despises - dominates his actions, even while he knows the inevitability of failure. Yet his personal relations with his family are distant.

The book is a great work of art. Much is understated, implied, ambiguous. The revolution has bittersweet consequences: it is obvious what was gained, but something was lost (the author was also a count). So much is said in so few words. Occasionally the peaks of human artistry inspire awe: how can a person do this? This is such a peak. Paragraphs, pages even, are perfect.

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84 of 86 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Novel of the 20th Century? 24 Jan 2005
By S Hines
Format:Hardcover
Every once in a while you stumble upon a book so magical, so beautifully and carefully written and so engrossing that the boundaries of what you thought were great literature are so rendered pointless that you reassess your opinions on all of the books you have read before. Lampedusa's 'The Leopard' is one such book. It was on reading an interview with Martin Scorcese about the birth of the mafia in Scicily that the book was brought to my attention; it is with a huge debt of gratitude that I tracked it down and dove into its beautiful depths. Never has a book moved me and made me thirst for more as this. The central character, Fabrizio, is a masterful creation; in turns a swaggering relic of the past and pathetic and useless bulwark against the onslaught of modernity encapsulated by Garibaldi. The pathos which threads through the novel is perfectly mirrored by the knowledge that Lampedusa wrote no more than this; a tragedy, which qualifies this as the greatest novel of the 20th Century. If you love literature, life and great works of art, read this.
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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Clear Vision 24 May 2006
Format:Hardcover
The Leopard is a strange novel. It was the only book written and published by Giovanni Tomasi di Lampedusa, last scion of a decadent Sicilian noble family. He wrote it towards the end of an indolent life and didn't live to see it brought into the world by the publishing house, Feltrinelli. It doesn't have a plot; to recount what happens would make it sound like a biography leavened with social history. It is a book about an aristocrat by an aristocrat recalling the passing of an age of aristocracy, and yet one that would have made a lot of sense to the Marxist literary culture of 1950s Italy. Its outlook is one of weary disillusionment that holds out little hope of social improvement or even personal contentment. It sounds dreadfully depressing, doesn't it? Lampedusa himself said once, "It is, I fear, rubbish." Actually, it is neither.

At its heart, there is one character: Fabrizio Corbero, Prince of Salina, The Leopard. It is in the portrayal of this man, and through his eyes, that of Sicily and its people that the quality of The Leopard lies. Lampedusa's eye is very sharp and sensitive to the smallest fluctuations of mood and motive, to the currents of history that pass through, or by, the characters and to the contradictions that sit comfortably together in every moment. One example of many. Salina is out hunting with the parish priest and they bring down a rabbit. They are out of sight of any human habitation in a land that would have looked the same to the Phoenicians, Dorians and Ionians 2,000 years before. The two hunters approach the fatally wounded prey and Don Fabrizio is fixed upon by "eyes that showed no reproof, but were full of a stunned shock towards the whole order of things ... the animal was dying tortured by an anxious hope of salvation, imagining its escape when it was already done for, just like so many men...a shiver went through the small body and it died; Don Fabrizio and Tumeo had had their sport; the first had even felt, in addition to the thrill of killing, the comfort of compassion."

In the space of two paragraphs, one incident and a meeting of eyes, Lampedusa is able compress the relationship of a landscape to its inhabitants, the reactions of men to history, the smallness of individual lives, and yet also the greatness of one life passing and the contradictory feelings of those who have caused it to pass.

There is mush else in The Leopard: a love story combining cynicism, class survival and a powerful eroticism; a country tale involving Salina's 'house priest', the Jesuit Father Pirrone and his family; the frustrated lives of the daughters of the house; the rising middle classes. Each chapter is devoted to a day or couple of weeks stretching from June 1860 to 1910 - from the exploits of Garibaldi and the Thousand to last days of the spinster daughters and the fiftieth anniversary of the establisment of the Kingdom of Italy. Though there are lapses, particularly when the author gives way to the social theorist and delivers lectures on the qualities of the Sicilians and its aristocracy, the quality of vision that Lampedusa's writing grants to the reader makes this book one of the 20th Century masterpieces of Italian literature.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars The Leopard
A well written and insightful novel describing the decline of the Italian aristocracy and the rise of a new society, as a result of the Rissorgimento. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Elgar
4.0 out of 5 stars Puts you in the mood for Sicily!
I wanted to reread this book as I was setting off on a 10-day holiday in Sicily - my first visit there - in March. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. S. Bird
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant evocation of a past Sicily to understand the present
Intrigued by what has been described as "perhaps the greatest novel of the (C20) century" and assisted by Colquoun's excellent translation, I was soon absorbed in the decaying... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Antenna
5.0 out of 5 stars The Leopard - a book about living at the time of Garibaldi's...
I enjoyed the quality of the writing. The story gave me a strong sense of the political aspirations of the time together with the feelings of a wide spectrum of the population. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mrs VA Banyard Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars 19th century Sicily
Great translation, beautiful descriptions and strong characters; a political and societal photography at the end of the century yet very current in regards to the way the different... Read more
Published 5 months ago by cyril
5.0 out of 5 stars The Leopard
I first read The Leopard in the early 1960s, and could hardly remember it, and I've never seen the film, so it was like reading a book for the first time. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Tartanreader
3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great
This novel is very effective up until the halfway point, when it begins to feel like Lampedusa lost confidence in his story... and didn't know how to bring it to completion. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Rusty
4.0 out of 5 stars Langour de mort
Twenty years after seeing the celebrated film, I got around to reading the celebrated book; and it's not hard to see what the celebrations are about. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Sporus
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging meander through 19th Century Sicilian Aristocracy
I have to agree with one of the other reviews - The Leopard is a strange novel. It is set in Sicily and starts in 1860. It follows the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio and his family. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Clare Topping
5.0 out of 5 stars Lives up to expectations
I had known about this book for years and I think tried it 20 years ago, but as others have said, I think it is suited to slightly older readers. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mark Twain
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