Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

A beautiful hardback edition of the great Italian classic.'Historical fiction at its best' The WeekIt is the spring of 1869 and there is talk of revolution in Sicily. 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. But then comes Garibaldi's landing on the Scicilian coast. As Garibaldi's forces press inland, the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.'Every once in a while...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'The poetry of Lampedusa's novel flows into the Sicilian countryside...a work of great artistry' Peter AckroydVintage Quarterbound Classics: Bound to be beautiful

”En stor og vidunderlig europæisk roman.” – Information Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusas klassiske værk er en både morsom og tragisk skildring af 1860'ernes Sicilien, der samledes med det øvrige Italien, og historien om en adelsslægts storhed og fald. En stor fortælling om et land og en familie i forandring. Fyrsten af Salina, eller Leoparden, som han også kaldes, er en mægtig mand på Sicilien. I familiens våbenskjold er det stærke rovdyr leoparden – og sådan er fyrsten også. Men i revolutionsåret 1860 er den sicilianske adels nedtur begyndt, og det gamle aristokrati frygter for sine privilegier og bakker instinktivt op om kong Ferdinando mod Garibaldis revolutionære styrker. Der er dog også interne stridigheder i de gamle familier, og Don Fabrizio fra den stolte Salino-slægt forstår ikke, hvorfor hans elskede nevø, Tancredi, kæmper på den modsatte side. Leoparden er en stor europæisk fortælling, der genudgives i Rosinantes klassikerserie i Thomas Harders roste oversættelse og med nyt forord af Mikkel Fønsskov.

Det är 1860-tal och en omvälvande tid på Sicilien. Giuseppe Garibaldis styrkor sveper fram över den italienska halvön med målet att ena landets många små kungadömen i en republik. En av Siciliens mest framstående familjer är Familjen Corbera, med överhuvudet Don Fabrizio, prins av Salina. Då Garibaldi landstiger på ön ställs Don Fabrizios tillvaro på sin spets. Hans ställning har redan tidigare satts i gungning av nyrika bönder och lågadel, och han konfronteras nu med hotet om en fullständig samhällsomvandling som skulle innebära slutet på släktens storhet. Don Fabrizio måste välja mellan att försvara adelns värderingar och att bryta med traditionen för att därigenom kunna säkra familjedynastins fortlevnad. Överallt tycker han sig se bevis på förfall och förruttnelse – han befinner sig mitt i en brytningstid där endast de starkaste och slugaste kommer att överleva. Den postumt utgivna Leoparden är en klassiker bland historiska romaner. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa började skriva romanen efter att hans familjegods förstörts under andra världskriget, och han använde sin egen farfarsfar, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, som förlaga till romanens Don Fabrizio. Leoparden utgavs på svenska för första gången 1960. Nu utkommer den, liksom novellerna och fragmenten i Berättelser, i nyöversättning av Viveca Melander. Tillsammans utgör Leoparden och Berättelser Lampedusas hela författarskap.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of one of the most poignant and enduringly popular novels of the twentieth century, left only a few other pieces of fiction when he died prematurely at the age of sixty. Childhood Memories and Other Stories, here presented in a new translation by Stephen Parkin and including previously deleted passages and the unpublished fragment ‘Torretta’, collects all of Lampedusa’s extant shorter fiction and provides a revealing glimpse into the writer’s workshop and the background to the composition of his masterpiece. From the atmospheric recollections of the Palazzo Lampedusa and the Palazzo Filangeri Cutò at the turn of the twentieth century in ‘Childhood Memories’ to the delightful fable ‘The Siren’, from the gently humorous, bitter­sweet tones of ‘Joy and the Law’ to ‘The Blind Kittens’ – the first chapter of what was intended to be a sequel to The Leopard – this volume showcases Lampedusa’s unparalleled ob­ser­vational powers and narrative skills.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's brief but brilliant writing career lasted a mere two years before he succumbed to lung cancer. In that time he produced one novel (The Leopard), three stories, and the beginning of a memoir, Places of my Infancy - a "tour" of Lampedusa's family estates in Sicily at the turn of 20thcentury. "For me childhood was a lost paradise," writes Lampedusa. "I was king of the home." Lampedusa gives lush, intimate descriptions of the estates in town and country: the home with its one hundred rooms, its garden with fountains full of eels, its church, its theater where wandering "country" theater groups would perform, the maids and the groundskeepers, and Lampedusa's own family members. Each detail - from his mother's silver comb to his father's camera (owned "in 1900 ") unlocks a memory of some event from the era.

As the head of the aristocratic family, Don Fabrizio is accustomed to knowing his own place in the world and expects his household to run accordingly. He is aware of the changes which are rapidly making men obsolete but he remains attached to the old ways. But Don Fabrizio will make few accommodations for the modern world.

NOW A NETFLIX SERIES - In this powerful novel, an aristocratic family grapples with societal upheaval and personal struggles against the backdrop of sweeping historical change. This beautiful hardcover edition, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, also includes two short stories and a brief memoir of the author's childhood. "A majestic, melancholy, and beautiful novel."--The New Yorker - "A masterwork . . . A superb novel."--Newsweek In 1860s Sicily, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, remains skeptical and stoic as he faces civil war and his family's loss of wealth and status. The prince's favorite nephew, Tancredi, who opportunistically supports the unification efforts, marries Angelica, a beautiful woman from a lower social class, to secure his future. This marriage symbolizes the shifting social order and the decline of the aristocracy. As Don Fabrizio struggles to adapt, he retreats into his love of astronomy, finding solace in the unchanging stars while his world crumbles around him. Ultimately, he must decide to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the last in a line of Sicilian princes, drew inspiration from his own family's decline to write this novel in the 1950s. The dramatic sweep and richness of Lampedusa's observation, his seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and his sure grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with beauty and power. "No novel in Italian literature has aroused so much passion or caused so much argument... The book is more than the memorable invocation of a certain place in a certain epoch. It is a work of art that will survive, long after the last sad palaces of Palermo have gone, because it deals with the central problems of the human experience." --from the Introduction by David Gilmour Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

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. W. Somerset Maugham is the Introducer to this beautiful Everyman's Library edition.