In 1957, Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, the last member of a great Sicilian family, died childless, impoverished and unknown, leaving behind him the recently completed manuscript of a novel. The following year the novel, "The Leopard", was published to great acclaim. For a quarter of a century Italian and foreign scholars were denied access to the reclusive writer's papers until, following a meeting with Lampedusa's adopted son, David Gilmour succeeded in gaining permission to work in the writer's last home in Sicily. There, and in the nearby ruin of the Palazzo Lampedusa, he found many letters, diaries, notebooks and photographs which had not seen the light of day since Lampedusa's death. In "The Last Leopard", David Gilmour brings to life not only an enigmatic writer of genius, but the vibrant Sicily and Italy of his youth, the Europe of the inter-war years and the slow, careful distillation of an undoubted masterpiece.
- ISBN10 0704325640
- ISBN13 9780704325647
- Publish Date 1 November 1988
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 15 January 1998
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Quartet Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 223
- Language English