Description

‘So vivid and true . . . Lampedusa is a beautiful novel, lyrical and wise. Reading it made me feel both melancholy and uplifted.’ David Gilmour, Financial Times

‘Brimming with wise and lyrical insights that make it a worthy heir to its mighty predecessor.’ New York Times

In the Sicily of the 1950s, still haunted by memories of Fascism and the war, the last Prince of Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, struggles to complete his only novel, The Leopard.

Tomasi is a veteran of the previous war, while his wife Alessandra is living in exile after her native Latvia is absorbed into the Soviet Union. The childless couple are survivors of a vanishing world of European aristocracy, living in the present, yet nostalgic for the decadent past. Diagnosed with advanced emphysema and with a profound awareness of his doomed lineage, the prince begins working on a novel. When The Leopard is posthumously published, it is to much acclaim; it will come to be considered the greatest Italian novel of the century.

Achingly haunting, Lampedusa tells the story of a man’s awakening to the possibilities of life as he nears its end.

‘In subtle and intelligent prose, Price invites us into the mind of a man striving to make sense of memory and mortality.’ Sunday Times

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE

Publisher Review

Steven Price powerfully imagines Tomasi's final days as the ailing author struggles to complete and publish his treasured manuscript. Set in a post war Palermo of bombed-out buildings and ruined palazzos, the novel contemplates what values are worth retaining in life and in art. A masterful storyteller, Price conjures Tomasi with language and images that evocatively fix him and his distant world indelibly in our minds. -- Jury Citation, Scotiabank Giller Prize More striking than the biographical accuracy or even the intricate scaffolding of the story is the texture of images by Price, also a poet. Their beauty casts the same spell as his sensualist subject and the unhurried pleasure of experiencing them. * The Globe and Mail * Lampedusa is one of the most powerful depictions of the creative act, and its roots in the wounds of the soul, that a reader is likely to encounter . . . Lampedusa is a marvel, a strange, wonderful, and utterly unforgettable book. * Toronto Star * So vivid and true . . . Lampedusa is a beautiful novel, lyrical and wise. Reading it made me feel both melancholy and uplifted. -- David Gilmour, author of The Last Leopard, A Life of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa * Financial Times *