_The Leopard_ is a very famous novel, published in 1958, one year after the author's death. It is di Lampedusa's only novel. It is really outstanding: I loved it, it's beautifully written, the central character is very charismatic, very well drawn, the story sad and honest. The subject is the Risorgimento, the unification movement of Italy in the early 1860's, and more particularly the effect of this Movement on the old Sicilian aristocracy as Represented by one man, the Prince of Salina. It movingly Depicts Salina's awareness of his, as it were, defunctness, and the Necessary, unavoidable, but still to some extent regrettable extinction of the old aristocracy.
