Volume 38, Number 20 · December 5, 1991
The Melancholy Prince
By Gabriele Annan
The Last Leopard: A Life of Giuseppe di Lampedusa
by David Gilmour
Pantheon, 223 pp., $22.00
For the European novel in general and for the Milan publisher Feltrinelli in particular, 1957 and 1958 were two anni mirabiles in a row. First he brought out Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, then Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo. One came from Russia, the other from Sicily—neither of them points on the literary horizon where the next comet was particularly expected at the time. And they were certainly comets: one of a kind, unforeseen, instantly recognizable as amazing—and instantly translated into every conceivable literary language. They have two other things in common: neither is experimental in form, or avant-garde, and both have lasted.
Review, 2929 words
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