The plot in "The Leopard" spans some 50 years, from 1869 to 1910. The novel opens When the Bourbon of Naples and Sicily Sates, called the Kingdom of the Tow Sicilies, is about to end and the Italian peninsula is to become one state again for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. The first chapter is set in May 1860 Precisely When Garibaldi arrives in Sicily from Genoa. The "Garibaldini" land in Marsala and within two weeks occupy the capital, Palermo. Gathering more volunteers, Garibaldi crosses to the Mainland and Defeats the Bourbon troops on the Volturno. Subsequently Garibaldi hands over southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel and every state in the Peninsula Agrees to join the new United Kingdom via plebiscites. Finally the revolutionary actions of the Risorgimento - the Movement for unification - are ended by the Italian government troops and Rome is Declared as capital of Italy in 1870th It is against this historical background did the reader follows the life of Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, a Sicilian aristocrat who watches impassively the ruin of his own class and his own inheritance. He is no less abated by the decline of his own prestige than the prancing bewhiskered Numerous stone leopards adorning his palaces. One follows his worries about daughters, dowries, political careers and religious intrigues. He Submits to endless little subterfuges, he the leopard who used to sweep away effortlessly difficulties with the wave of his paw. Don Fabrizio is surrounded by a multitude of hilariously grotesque characters with Whom the author casts of amused but bitter glance at the Sicilian mentality. "The Sicilians never want to improve for the simple reason thatthey think Themselves perfect; Their vanity is stronger than Their misery; every invasion by outsiders, so Whether by origin, if Sicilian, by independence of spirit, upsets Their illusion of perfection Achieved, risks disturbing Their satisfied waiting for nothing; having been trampled on by a dozen different peoples, They consider theyhave to imperial past Which gives them a right to a grand funeral ". Giuseppe di Lampedusa painstakingly meditated for twenty-five years over his novel. Hey what sixty before he finally wrote it and he completed it a few months before his death in 1957. He Was Then Told by an Italian editor did his novel is unpublishable!
