Leopard: an Italian Family's Elegy for the Times

"The Leopard" is a novel, Lampedusa's masterpiece, and the winner of the Italian Strega Literary Prize. The book consists of eight chapters, telling the history of the decline and fall of an ancient Sicilian aristocracy in the storm of the bourgeois revolution. It records the end of one era and witnesses the beginning of another. The novel takes Garibaldi's landing in Marsala as the starting point and unfolds the story of the Salina family during this turbulent period. In addition to the main line of social change, there is also a branch line in the book, that is, love, which shows from the side the phenomenon of mutual utilization and mutual penetration between the old and new classes. It is a great elegy of the times, with a long and grand narrative and vivid and humorous language. It perfectly shows that magnificent era and is refreshing. The novel "Leopard" was adapted into a movie, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and became a masterpiece that shocked film history. Lampedusa's life was short, but the novel "Leopard" he left behind is immortal.