Chronicles the turbulent transformation of the Risorgimento, in the period of Italian Unification. It pits the waning feudal authority of the elegant and stately Prince of Salina against the materialistic cunning of Don Calogero.

Elegiac, bittersweet and profoundly moving, The Leopard chronicles the turbulent transformation of the Risorgimento, in the period of Italian Unification. The waning feudal authority of the elegant and stately Prince of Salina is pitted against the materialistic cunning of Don Calogero, in Tomasi's magnificently descriptive memorial to a dying age. Tomasi's award-winning, semi-autobiographical book became the best-selling novel in Italian history, and is now considered one of the greatest works of 20th-century fiction. It tells an age-old tale of the conflict between old and new, ancient and modern, reflecting bitterly on the inevitability and cruelty of change.

Review
'Sicily 1860: Prince Fabrizio has always lived contentedly with the lovely mute ghostsA" of the past. But now, with the impending unification with Italy and his nephew's undesirable marriage, he fears ruin. This is a beautiful meditation on change, with Sicily and its golden landscape in the starring role. Brilliant.' - Rachel Redford, The Observer The Top Audiobooks of 2009: 'David Horovitch's voice, rich in timbre and sepia in tone, is wonderfully paired with this masterpiece, a tale of degeneration and ruin. Like the declining House of Salina itself, Horovitch's presentation possesses a certain 'shabby grandeur' that acquires a suitably obnoxious edge in conveying the vulgarity and ruthlessness of those who are tearing down the old order with the help of upstart money, main chance and relentless ambition.' - Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post In his bougainvillea-covered villa five hours by cart from Palermo, Prince Fabrizio faces change, even annihilation, as Garibaldi is about to hand over the whole of the Two Sicilies to King Victor Emmanuel to make a united Italy. The Prince meditates on change and growing older, seeing his future only too clearly with 'beslobbered pillows and a pot under the bed'. Nevertheless the sensuous whole sparkles with colour and imagery: the 'tyrannous sun', the 'yellow cheeks' of peaches, the dogs 'as passive as bailiffs'. Every listening yields more. Wonderful. - Rachel Redford, The Oldie Even through the most active scenes, David Horovitch always projects a hint of the elegiac tone that suffuses this novel. Published in 1958, Lampedusa's story recounts the changes in Sicilian culture that took place during the violent Italian unification of the mid-1800s. Listeners, many of whom might know nothing of mid-18th-century Sicily, will feel the strains of change - the one constant aspect of history. Most of the book is told from point of view of Fabrizio, a nobleman, and Horovitch's voice makes him gruff and cultured, noble with an edge of barbarism. We feel the prince's conflict between his love of his own past and his appreciation for the possibilities of the newly unified Italy. - D.M.H., AudioFile