22. The Leopard: The Greatest Historical Novel Ever Written?

Summary

The Book Club – Episode 22: "The Leopard: The Greatest Historical Novel Ever Written?" July 13, 2026
Hosted by Dominic Sandbrook & Tabitha Syrett

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dominic and Tabby dive deep into The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, often hailed as "the greatest historical novel ever written." Set in Sicily during the tumultuous period of Italian unification, the book offers more than a historical saga—it’s a sensuous, melancholic meditation on change, mortality, and the decline of an aristocratic world.

The hosts explore the novel’s hauntingly rich prose, its unforgettable characters, and the poignant life story of the author, who, much like his protagonist, was a man watching the slow dissolution of his world. The discussion also covers the book’s place in Italian literary history, the controversy around its reception, and its enduring legacy both as literature and as a philosophical reflection on history and human nature.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction & Setting the Mood (00:41–02:18)

• The episode opens with a dramatic reading from The Leopard, featuring Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, and the younger generation (Tancredi and Angelica) at a ball—a scene radiating with themes of aging, nostalgia, and fleeting vitality.
• Tabby introduces the book's context: published posthumously in 1958, it chronicles the period of Italian unification (Risorgimento), zeroing in on how historical change is perceived by those about to be swept away by it.
• “It’s not just a historical novel. … If you’ve got no interest whatsoever in 19th-century Italian politics, you can still find this a really beautiful and moving piece of art and a sort of subtle reflection on human nature.” – Dominic (04:57)

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The Life and Character of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (06:16–24:12)

• Lampedusa’s own aristocratic roots deeply inform the novel. Born in 1896 in Palermo into a declining noble family, his life was shaped by legal disputes over the family estate—a real-life drama echoing the themes of decay in the novel.
• His mother, Beatrice, was his greatest influence: domineering and highly literate, she fostered his love for literature but stifled his independence.
• Lampedusa’s war experiences are filled with irony—his POW experience is described with humor and detachment (“His only punishment is to reimburse the Austrians for his train fare.” – Tabby, 13:29).
• A melancholic, bookish recluse, he spent decades reading, rarely writing. His comfort blanket was The Pickwick Papers, and he was obsessed with English literature.
• His marriage to the psychoanalyst Alexandra "Licy" Wolff was primarily intellectual and distant, reflecting his general social detachment (“He describes marriage as ‘flames for a year, ashes for 30.’” – Dominic, 19:26).
• In the 1950s, Lampedusa gathered young intellectuals for literary salons at Palermo’s Café Mazzara—a forerunner to the podcast’s spirit.
• His decision to finally write The Leopard in his 50s was described as "an attempt to redeem what he recognized had been a largely wasted life” (25:17).

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Writing & Publishing The Leopard (24:12–34:50)

• Lampedusa meticulously crafted the novel, obsessed with avoiding literary clichés: “He wants every single sentence, every word to be packed with imagery and with subtlety…” – Dominic (26:39)
• Tabby reads an evocative passage highlighting Lampedusa’s fusion of sensuality and decay, using a garden as metaphor (“Scents that were cloying, fleshy, and slightly putrid, like aromatic liquids distilled from the relics of certain saints…” – Tabby, 27:55).
• The road to publication was rocky. Early drafts were rejected by Milan publisher Mondadori, perhaps for being out of step with the prevailing neorealist, leftist literary tastes of 1950s Italy.
• Lampedusa died in 1957 before seeing his work published; it was only in 1958, after a ball scene chapter was recovered, that the novel appeared and won Italy’s prestigious Strega Prize.
• Its critical reputation grew, and despite initial leftist skepticism (“Lampedusa has put us back 60 years” – Vasco Pratolini, 33:45), both critics and the public eventually embraced it.

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The Historical Context of The Leopard (35:36–41:16)

• Set amidst the Garibaldi-led unification of Italy in 1860, the novel’s background is explained in detail, including the corrupt plebiscite that mirrored Sicily’s resistance to change.
• The episode explores how the arrival of “freedom” brought little real improvement—taxes increased, the Mafia rose, and the aristocracy’s decline was inevitable.
• “The reality for Sicily is stagnation and violence… His characters are often trapped by their own idealism.” – Dominic (41:16)

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Character Studies

Don Fabrizio, the Prince (41:20–47:12)

• Central to the novel is Don Fabrizio: a physically imposing, intellectually gifted, essentially melancholic figure who senses his world is ending.
• The Prince’s sensuality, yearning for astronomy, and deep cynicism mark him as both a product of his era and a voice for the author’s outlook.
• “He’s intelligent enough to see that his world is dying, but he’s cultivated enough to observe that death with beautiful serenity and enduring charm.” – Tabby (43:56)
• The stream-of-consciousness style is compared to Mrs. Dalloway and modernist techniques.

Tancredi and Angelica (48:22–56:41)

• Tancredi, Don Fabrizio’s nephew, embodies the survivor: charming, opportunistic, and cynically adaptive.
• Angelica, the beautiful daughter of a nouveau-riche politician, and Concetta, the prince’s daughter, represent the social and emotional entanglements created by shifting power.
• Their “romance” is explored as both erotic and transactional: “They see each other as a prize rather than as a person.” – Dominic (53:50)
• The famous “chase through the palace” scene is noted as an example of possibility and thwarted desire—“It’s one of the best examples in literature, I think, of the chase.” – Dominic (56:41)

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Themes: Change, Decay, and Cynicism

The Nature of Change (58:44–64:51)

• The Prince’s famous exchange: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” (62:27)
• Tabby and Dominic unpack the fatalism of the novel: Sicily as “uniquely resistant to change,” weighed down by centuries of outside rule and climate—“there’s something uniquely Sicilian that makes it impossible” (61:20).
• The contrast: Is change even possible, or does it simply usher in a new era of decay marked by “little jackals and hyenas” replacing “leopards and lions”? (63:09)

The Specter of Death & Finality (66:11–74:06)

• Death is omnipresent: from the first line’s invocation (“now and at the hour of our death”) to the recurring images of fading roses, dead soldiers, and a decaying aristocracy.
• The closing chapters: Concetta and her sisters as aged, embittered spinsters represent the futility of preserving relics of a lost world.
• The novel’s last image—a stuffed dog thrown from a window, “dancing for an instant in the air, then all found peace in a heap of livid dust” (73:20)—is interpreted as a metaphor for tradition, fleeting vitality, and the ultimate inevitability of oblivion.
• “We’re thrown up into the air and we seem to be dancing, … then we just land on the ground in a heap of dust.” – Dominic (73:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why the book transcends its genre:

  • “It’s not just a historical novel… you can still find this a really beautiful and moving piece of art and a sort of subtle reflection on human nature.” – Dominic (04:57)

• On nostalgia and melancholy:

  • “It read very much to me as the sad nostalgia, the sense of something slipping away.” – Tabby (05:25)

• On Lampedusa’s personal motivation:

  • “…an attempt to redeem what he recognized had been a largely wasted life, which I think is quite sad.” – Dominic (25:17)

• On the book’s atmosphere:

  • “It is incredibly lush. It’s sensuous… he’s melding sweet, sensuous scents with decay and death. It’s very evocative.” – Tabby (27:55)

• On Tancredi’s maxim:

  • “‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ Such a famous line, isn’t it?” – Tabby (62:27)

• On the ending:

  • “…its form recomposed itself for an instant in the air. There seemed to be dancing, a quadruped with long whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust.” – (73:20)
  • “That’s like us in our life. … We seem to be moving, and then we just land on the ground in a heap of dust.” – Dominic (73:56)

• Final ratings:

  • “I’m going to give it nine out of 10. But it’s a brilliant book and everyone should read it.” – Dominic (76:02)
  • “I’m going to give it a 10 out of 10. … It has just such grace to it and elegance.” – Tabby (76:28)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:41–02:18: Dramatic reading; introduction to the book and its context.
• 06:16–24:12: Lampedusa’s family history, character, and influences.
• 24:12–34:50: The arduous writing and winding publication journey of The Leopard.
• 35:36–41:16: Contextualizing the historical setting and the real Sicilian unification.
• 41:20–47:12: Exploration of Don Fabrizio’s character.
• 48:22–56:41: Discussions of Tancredi, Angelica, and Concetta; their roles and relationships.
• 58:44–64:51: Philosophical digressions on change, continuity, and Sicily’s fate.
• 66:11–74:06: The pervasive theme of death and decline; analysis of the novel’s ending.
• 76:01–78:41: Final verdicts and reflections.

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Concluding Thoughts

Dominic and Tabby argue that The Leopard endures because it is both a high-water mark of historical fiction and a deeply modern, existential work about loss, memory, and resignation. Lampedusa blends the lush, sensual world of a dying aristocracy with unsparing irony and existential melancholy, showing that history is as much about our illusions and self-understandings as it is about actual events.

Both hosts highly recommend the novel for its beauty, complexity, and insight—and for the unforgettable experience of inhabiting the mind of Don Fabrizio, a man both of (and above) his time.

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Rating Roundup:

• Dominic: 9/10 sexy eye patches (“sometimes the cynicism is overwhelming, but it’s a brilliant book”)
• Tabby: 10/10 sexy eye patches (“a piece of art…turns decline into beauty whilst also laying bare the putrid kind of vileness of it at the same time”)

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Next Episodes Preview:
Look out for specials on Circe by Madeline Miller, The 39 Steps, My Brilliant Friend, Brave New World, and more.

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Transcript

[Christy]

Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon and I'm here at the office checking out the Shake it out shorts. These have been my go tos, and I kind of think of them as a middle ground between a true run short and a more playful, athletic, sporty short. They have all the performance you want for running, so a comfy liner, our lightweight swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like is the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun, so they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake it out shorts in store now or [e-mail].

[Dominic]

The door opened.

[Tabby]

Uncle, you're looking wonderful this evening. Black suits you perfectly. What are you looking at? Are you paying?

[Dominic]

Caught to death, Tanquerade was arm in arm with Angelica. Both of them were still under the sensual influence of the dance and were tired. For both of them, death was purely an intellectual concept, a facet of knowledge, as it were, and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh yes, it existed, of course, but it was something that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don Fabrizio that it was inner ignorance of this supreme consolation which makes the young feel sorrows much more sharply than the old. The latter are nearer the safety exit.

[Tabby]

Prince, said Angelica, we'd heard you were here. We came to have a little rest, but also to ask you something. I hope you won't refuse it.

[Dominic]

Her eyes were full of sly laughter. Her hand was resting on Don Fabrizio's sleeve.

[Tabby]

I wanted to ask you to dance the next mazurka with me. Do say yes. Now, don't be naughty. We all know you used to be a great dancer.

[Dominic]

The Prince was very pleased and felt suddenly quite spry. The capuchins crypt indeed. His hairy cheeks quivered with pleasure. The idea of the mazurka rather alarmed him, though that military dance or heel banging in turns was not for his joints. To kneel before Angelica would be a pleasure. But what if he found it difficult to get up afterwards? Thank you, my dear girl. You're making me feel young again. I'll be happy to obey you, but not the mazurka. Grant me the first waltz.

[Tabby]

So. Hello, everybody. That is a memorable moment from Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampeduza's book the Leopard or Il Gattipado in the original Italian, and it was first published in Milan in 1958, and it's often described as the greatest historical novel ever written, it's set in Sicily during the wars of Italian unification. And it begins in May 1860 with Garibaldi's red Shirts, or the Red shirted Volunteers landing in Sicily to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy. And then the book ends. Ends with a unified Italy under the House of Savoy. So it's a book about lots of things. It's about historical change and continuity, but there's much more than that. So much of it is. Is what's going on beneath the surface. It's very sensuous. It's a sensuous portrait of Sicily. So there's a. You know, it's about the smells, the sounds, the way it feels, but it's also about a man, the declining years of a single aristocrat. And this is Don Fabrizio, the man sort of in whose head we are in that opening reading. And he is the Prince of Celaena and his world is changing drastically and he can feel it slowly slipping away. And he sort of has a tragic sense of what will come. So, Dominic, you must have read this book before. In fact, I know you have, because I'm pretty sure you've mentioned it on the Rest Is History before.

[Dominic]

I have, yes. When we're talking about great historical novels. So. Hi, everybody. I read it years ago. I absolutely love the film adaptation, which was made in 1963 by Luchino Visconti, who is himself an aristocrat, actually. And it's got Burt Lancaster, he plays the prince, and Alain Delon, who plays Tanqueredi. And my favorite actress of all time, Tabby, Claudia Cardinale.

[Tabby]

You're a big fan of her artistry.

[Dominic]

Artistry is exactly the word. She plays Angelica. And so you've got these three characters in that scene that we did. And Angelica is the product of the sort of rising liberal middle classes. And these are the people who are likely to inherit the reigns of the new Italy. But they also pose a deadly threat to the prince's kind of feudal world. And I thought when I first read it, so that's about 20 years ago, that it was an absolutely brilliant book as a portrait of character, as a portrait of a particular point in time. But also what I liked when I first read it was that it's a meditation on political change or the lack of political change. I saw other things in it this time, actually, partly because we're reading in the context of reading so many other wonderful books, and I saw sort of similarities to perhaps some quite surprising books that we've done before, not, I have to say, A Court of Thorns and roses, Tabby.

[Tabby]

It's the obvious comparison, but, I mean,

[Dominic]

you said it's a historical novel. It's not just a historical novel. I think so. E.M. forster, when he first reviewed it, said, it's not a historical novel, it's just a novel that happens to take place in history. I think that's a good way of thinking about it. I think if you've got no interest whatsoever in 19th century Italian politics, you can still still find this a really beautiful and moving piece of art and a sort of subtle reflection on human nature. What about you, Tabby? What did you make of it when you first read it?

[Tabby]

I think that that's a really, really good point, because when I first read it, I definitely didn't read it as a historical novel. I was about 13. I knew nothing about the historical context. It doesn't read like a typical historical saga. So much of it is about kind of the feel. It's about mood and melancholy and continuity or, you know, the break in a cycle. And so that's it read very much to me as the sad nostalgia, the sense of something slipping away.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

But because I was young, because I was 13, I could see. I could see that it was a thing of beauty from the language, which is so elegant and so finely kind of wrought. I didn't remember it very well because I don't think there's actually that. Not a lot happens. It's kind of a stream of events that run into each other. So I couldn't remember much of it. And I was always quite interested in the story behind it in Lampedusa himself, because it's kind of legendary now, how the book came to be published.

[Dominic]

Of course. Yeah.

[Tabby]

And he's a very interesting man.

[Dominic]

He's a very interesting man. So actually, before we talk about the book itself, let's talk about Lampedusa, because this bloke and how he came to write this book, it is a pretty remarkable story. So his name, you'll see it on the book, is Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The slightly confusing thing is that the surname matches Tomasi.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Because they're. That. That's the family. But he is the prince of Lampedusa, which is this island kind of basically in the middle of nowhere, closer to Africa than to Italy. And to give you a bit of background, to give people a bit of background, because this is the story of an aristocratic prince by. And, you know, it's the story of a prince by a prince. So Giuseppe Tomasi himself was born in 1896 in Palermo and his family traced their lineage back for centuries. They'd been elevated to the aristocracy in the 16th century and then made princes of Lampedusa in 1667. And the emblem was a leopard, a leopard. Rampant in the leopard. Fabrizio, or the narrator, says of Fabrizio's family that they're basically always been incapable of adding up their expenditure and subtracting their own debts. And this is a portrait of the Tomati family. They are useless historically managing their money and they're just a sort of. They're just basically idle wasters for most of history.

[Tabby]

It's kind of a tale as old as time often about, you know, people's perception of the aristocracy.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly. It is, exactly. And of them, only one of them is really notable, and this is the eighth prince, Prince Giulio. He was the leopard author's great grandfather. And he is in some ways the model for Fabrizio, the protagonist of the book. So he loved astronomy, he collected scientific books, he went on trips to see eclipses. Fabrizio is a very alpha character. And in reality, Prince Julio was not an alpha character at all. So there's a little bit of. Well, we talk about how there's a bit of wishful fulfillment in, in Lampedusa's portrait of him.

[Tabby]

He said, though, in a letter to a friend Lampedusa, that he, he wrote that he had intentionally kind of exaggerated his impressiveness.

[Dominic]

Yes, I think so, I think so. Anyway, Prince Julio died in 1885 and he didn't, he either didn't leave a will or his wife destroyed the will because she wanted every. All her children to share, including her daughters, to share the estate equally. And basically the result of this was that the Lampedusa estate had to be divided between nine different children.

[Tabby]

Disaster.

[Dominic]

And it ended up in court, effectively for the next 60 years. It was in what was called judicial administration. So it's a bit like the estate. The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case in Bleak

[Tabby]

House totally is a never ending case where no one ever ends up benefiting because there are so many claimants.

[Dominic]

So all these different claimants are allowed to live in the houses that belong to the Leopardusa family, but they're not allowed to make any money from the estates under the.

[Tabby]

An embittered commune.

[Dominic]

Exactly. This is exactly what happens. So there's. I think this obviously lies behind a big theme of the book. We'll talk about this after the break is the sense of inevitable decline and decay that hangs over the whole thing, this doomed world. I mean, this is as he's dying. Fabrizio thinks about all the beauties of their estate. The tapestries at Donna Fugata, the almond groves at Ragatisti, the Fountain of Afrititi, that these will all be lost forever. And this is obviously what happened to the author's own family.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

However, as David Gilmour says in his brilliant biography of Tomasi de Lampedusa, he says, you know, it's a very familiar story in Sicily, but what made the Lampedusa house different was that at the end of the line, there was one person who remembered and understood the traditions of his family and who was able at the last moment, to transform them into literature. And this is Giuseppe.

[Tabby]

Yeah, so this is Giuseppe, and he grew up in the Lampedusa palace in the center of Palermo in the early 1900s. And, you know, it's a crumbling, slightly wretched place. And he lives there with his parents, sort of a father who's been. Who's sort of disaffected, dissatisfied with everything that's happened because of this ongoing legal battle. Uncles and domestic servants. His father was haughty and arrogant. It's kind of your typical aristocrat, obsessed with horses and feuding, essentially, yes. But his biggest influence was his mother, Beatrice, because his mother. So she was also from a Sicilian aristocratic family, but she was a great reader, and she owned this tremendous library, had a huge fiction collection from the 17th and 18th centuries. And she. I mean, it's another old story. She totally dominated her son even after his marriage. And I think it probably had a really bad effect on his marriage.

[Dominic]

It did, yeah.

[Tabby]

I mean, unsurprisingly, I think. And then in Sicily, there were always rumors that it was actually her and not him that wrote the Leopard. And he found this old manuscript and edited it, and then, you know.

[Dominic]

Yeah, which is not true. He definitely did.

[Tabby]

Which is not true. Which is not true. So he grows up in this odd environment, and he's a very taciturn boy. He has few friends. He's definitely not one for kind of games and japes. He always strikes me as fairly humorless, but then that can't be right, because there is a real dark humor, I think, underlying the Leopard. He calls himself a boy who loved solitude. He liked the company of things more than of. And you can see this right till the end of his life. And he divides his time between the crumbling Palermo palace and then the family country estate. And this is at Santa Margherita in southwest Palermo. And this is the model for the home in Sicily that Fabrizio loves and That's Donna Fogarta, and it's his country estate in the book.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

He only goes to school when he's 14, but by then he speaks Italian, French, German, and he wants to read literature at university, but his father thinks that it's not a good idea and he should become a diplomat instead. And it's unclear, really, whether he ever did go to university. He enrolls in Genoa, probably did some classes in Rome. But then, of course, the First World War breaks out and he's called up and he serves against the Austrians, but then he's captured in 1917.

[Dominic]

This is an incredible story, isn't it? Him and the Austrians.

[Tabby]

It is an incredible story. And also when you read about the kind of man that he was, this seems quite incongruous, completely, all these things that happened to him. So he sent to a prisoner of war camp in Hungary and that. Amazing. It's just so bizarre. On the way, the Austrians allow him. His. His captors allow him to go on a tour of Vienna. And he claims later that it's because his German A was so brilliant that they were like, yeah, you know, bravo, do what you will. But also because they discovered the ducal coronet sewn into his shirts.

[Dominic]

It's a great story. I mean, it's a great story. You know, the Austrians do behave in quite a. Quite a bizarre way in the first one.

[Tabby]

Yeah. These are people that love feathered hats. They're going to love a ducal coronet, they'll forgive anything. But then, even better, he actually manages to bribe the camp guards to give him an Austrian uniform, and he manages to escape and gets a train to the Swiss border. Inevitably, he's recaptured. There's always something quite comical about people sort of escaping and then being recaptured sort of in the First World War. But he's well treated. His only punishment, it's very severe. I don't know. I don't know how he recovered from this. His only punishment is to reimburse the Austrians for his train fare.

[Dominic]

That's so Central European. It really.

[Tabby]

It really is. And have some cake with it. And then he's taken back to the camp and escapes again at the end of the world, of the war. So he's very. It's very cold. It's.

[Dominic]

Yes, it is behavior, but cold. It's. But more. But. But sort of more funner.

[Tabby]

Yeah, funner and more aristocratic.

[Dominic]

Exactly.

[Tabby]

And then after the war, though, you know, this all sounds sort of jolly fun, but after the war, he does sink into, you know, lassitude. He has stress, he complains about insomnia and nightmares.

[Dominic]

Insomnia and nightmares. I think those two things kind of happen simultaneously.

[Tabby]

No, I don't think so. Because nightmares happen when you're asleep.

[Dominic]

They do indeed.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Think about it.

[Dominic]

Anyway, yeah, he gets back home, he's coming, he can't sleep and yet simultaneously having nightmares, which is peculiar. It's the 1920s, it's very turbulent in Italy. It's what's called the, the red years, so lots of strikes, labour and rest in the countryside. It's the rise of the black shirts, then the advent of Mussolini and fascism. Yeah.

[Tabby]

It's so ironic that following on the heels I know this great liberal movement

[Dominic]

well, there'd been this sort of great enthusiasm for liberalism beforehand, which we'll talk about in the book, because he's very critical about liberalism and actually one of the reasons. Well, he's critical of, about liberal democracy and whether it can ever work in Italy. He thinks it's brilliant in, in Britain. He loves Britain and he loves, like British politics, he loves British literature, but he says, oh, it will never work in Italy. We can't, you know, liberal democracy can't really take root. And what that means is that. Or it's all a sham and a pretense. And what that means is that in the 1920s, he's actually kind of fine with the advent of fascism. He sees it as a regrettable necessity. He's never particularly critical of Mussolini. He doesn't like the uniforms, he doesn't like the parades. He doesn't like the violence and the demagoguery.

[Tabby]

I'd have thought he'd find him distasteful.

[Dominic]

Yeah, I think he finds Mussolini distasteful, but he's not a sort of out and out critic by any means. And actually in this period he's quite, he's just quite detached, you know, he's an aristocrat in Palermo who is lonely. He's quite misanthropic. He, he, he's not very sociable, he's not a good mixer. He's, he's aloof, he's quite disdainful of other people. So here he is, this guy, just sort of drifting along in his own little bubble, basically.

[Tabby]

Yeah. And so, I mean, as is so often the case, he spends much of his time reading. His family call him Il Mostro, so the Monster, because he's so ridiculously well read and in history and literature and often in original languages, which is remarkable.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And he loves, as you said, he has a special fondness for English literature, which is excellent to hear. He's read Tristram Shandy three times and he adores Shakespeare. And it's such a. I don't know, it's such a charming thought that when. His comfort blanket, in a sense, you know, for many of us, that's sort of Harry Potter or the Rings, his comfort blanket is Shakespeare. But his favorite book of all is the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. So, like Tolstoy and Louisa May Alcott, who also were big fans.

[Dominic]

What is it with the Pickwick Papers?

[Tabby]

Is.

[Dominic]

I don't even think it's that good.

[Tabby]

I don't either. It does absolutely nothing for me. I don't know. Maybe it's a time and place thing.

[Dominic]

Yeah, it must be.

[Tabby]

You know, humors change. Yeah. He keeps a copy of it on his bedside table, and then he always takes it with him on his travels. So he's constantly rereading it. So it's quite a sort of. It's kind of a nostalgic thing, I think. That's lovely. And then between 1922 and 1927, his uncle is Italian ambassador in London, so he visits several times. And he goes on these wonderful literary pilgrimages. So, for example, he visits the Bronte's house. But he loves. He's captivated. He obviously has a, you know, quite a romantic spirit underneath. He loves the moors, he said they're immense maw, boundless and bare.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And then it's in London that he meets a very implausible figure Indeed.

[Dominic]

Yes, his future wife. So basically, he doesn't. Up to this point, he hasn't been trying to catch. Because he's just sort of. He's quite a sort of. He's a solitary, awkward figure who just walks around with the massive copy of Shakespeare all the time.

[Tabby]

And so cynical. Sounds like me. And so cynical as well, I suppose.

[Dominic]

Incredibly cynical.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Again, something has in common with you. And in 1925, at his uncle's house in London, he met this woman called Alessandra Wolf, who everybody called her Lisi. And she is the daughter of an exiled Baltic German baron. Well, actually, her father is dead, but she's in exile after the Russian Revolution. She speaks loads of languages. She's really into psychoanalysis. That's her great passion. She had married this Estonian baron, but he turned out to be gay. And then she becomes. She's divorced from him. She and Giuseppe Tomasi become great pals, and then they sort of strike up this romantic relationship, although it's a romance founded really on intellectual connection. Rather than, I think, a physical one. So what they will do is they will spend evenings together just reading passages from their favorite authors.

[Tabby]

It's very erotic.

[Dominic]

Well, I think that's. You don't think that's quite.

[Tabby]

I do think that's nice. I think that's lovely, I have to say.

[Dominic]

So in 1932, they get married, and this does not really work out well because Giuseppe's mother is still on the scene. She's very possessive, they are. Two women quarrel and Lisi, basically, after a year, says, fine, I'm out of here. And they're still married, but she basically goes off to Latvia, and she hangs around in Latvia for the rest of the 1930s, and only when Latvia is then absorbed into the Soviet Union does she come back to Sicily. Their relationship generally seems to be pretty distant. There's not a tremendous amount of affection in their letters.

[Tabby]

I actually read some of their letters yesterday.

[Dominic]

Oh, did you?

[Tabby]

And they're quite sweet. They're parts from sweet, but they're certainly not, you know, particularly loving in a lot of his. He's constantly asking her to get the Leopard published.

[Dominic]

Can you basically do a load of errands for me? I think that's. I think that's effectively the fate of any marriage.

[Tabby]

Oh, but then sometimes he'll. Sometimes he'll go, go to the doctor, love.

[Dominic]

If you got a letter from your spouse just saying, go to the doctor,

[Tabby]

you'd be like, come on, trot down to the therapist.

[Dominic]

Well, in the Leopard, Fabrizio muses about marriage, and he describes it as flames for a year, ashes for 30. So, Tabby, that's a warning to you.

[Tabby]

I know. That's the fear, isn't it?

[Katie K]

Jeez.

[Tabby]

So then in 1934, his father dies and he becomes the Prince of Lampedusa. And he now decides to spend most of his time in Palermo, first in the palace, but then it's bombed in the Second World War. Which is also so telling because there's a moment in the book when they're describing the beautiful frescoes, and then they say, oh, but then it would end up being wiped out by sort of a shell made somewhere in America. So that cynicism always comes through. And then he moves to a new house in Via Butera. And that is, now, you tell me, an apartment hotel, and you say, it looks very nice.

[Dominic]

Tragically, this is exactly the kind of way that I spend my time. So basically, I fell down a massive rabbit hole, obviously, looking up this place. You can stay in his old house. I think it's the number one rated guest house on TripAdvisor.

[Tabby]

Yeah, from Lampedooza to TripAdvisor.

[Dominic]

But to stay in the room where he had written the letter.

[Tabby]

No, it's true. I was actually speaking to someone the other day that went and saw all of his handwritten manuscripts around there, so.

[Dominic]

Oh, wow, that's nice.

[Tabby]

People kind of see him in streets of Palermo going for his morning coffee, and he's described as a large, bulky figure, very distinct and shabby. His eyes alert, and his leather bag was overloaded with books and confectionery, which had to last him for the rest of the day.

[Dominic]

So. Cakes and stuff.

[Tabby]

Cakes and books.

[Dominic]

I think he's like one of those people that you sometimes meet who's like, in a hot day, wearing a massive overcoat, sweating, shuffling along, shuffling along, looking very shifty and melancholy, and carrying a big bag stuffed with copies of Shakespeare and cakes. That's basically his vibe.

[Tabby]

I think that's quite chic in a funny way. But then the English painter Derek Hill, who. Who is a visitor, says he's a very un. Sicilian man. He's reticent, retiring, and extremely erudite and intellectual. He looks a bit like T.S. elliot.

[Dominic]

He does.

[Tabby]

He would have liked. Yeah, he loves T.S. eliot. And he spends his time chain smoking, drinking water, so there's that famous party spirit coming out to play, and he's just constantly lost in this world of books.

[Dominic]

But then he does something very shaming. Tabby.

[Tabby]

It's mortifying, actually.

[Dominic]

At the Beginning of the 1950s, he starts his own book club podcast, effectively.

[Tabby]

Never stood a chance after that.

[Dominic]

No. So basically what he does at the Cafe Mazzara in Palermo, which is his favorite hangout, he basically will hold court with some of his younger friends, like, you know, sort of sons of aristocratic families. About books.

[Tabby]

Producers.

[Dominic]

Yeah, the producers. This is very much my vibe. And he. And Lisi, his wife, says, well, why don't you turn these into a little literature course? And you can. They can a book group, and they'll turn up every week and they'll sit around, listen to him, and he'll talk about books.

[Tabby]

I admire this.

[Dominic]

He's like, this is brilliant. And he really, really gets stuck into it. He writes more than a thousand pages of notes. So that's very Tabitha Syrett.

[Tabby]

I know Birds of a Feather.

[Dominic]

He writes all these huge, like, reams and reams of notes about the whole of English literature, from the Venerable Bead to Graham Green. And he knows he's read everything. So if you. Some minor Restoration poet that no one in England has heard of Giuseppe Tomasi delampadusa has read him and knows all about him.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And he gets massively deep into, like, us. He goes really deep into the historical background. He loves that. So sometimes his listeners will say, can we actually talk about the book?

[Christy]

Like.

[Dominic]

And he's like, no.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Like, we need to do the first half of the podcast about the author's life. Tabby, talk us through some of his highlights, because he and I have some of the same tastes.

[Tabby]

Yeah. So he loves Shakespeare and he likes the same Shakespeare plays as you. So Henry IV, the first, the second. He said that he would sacrifice 10 years of his life for the privilege of meeting Falstaff for an hour, which I think is odd, because Falstaff's quite a laugh. No.

[Dominic]

Why is that odd?

[Tabby]

Well, because I don't. I think of him as not a particular. Like, you know, I can't really see him going out drinking with Prince. Halloween, you know.

[Dominic]

No, that's true. So they.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Well, he just thinks. I think the Falstaff is a brilliant character. But you're right, they're not exactly soulmates.

[Tabby]

But then he also. He adores Dickens, loves Jane Austen. He loves Wuthering Heights, which is interesting, given, you know, the very first episode of the show. He's. He kind of buys into the. The Bronte legend. He said that Emily Bronte had descended down deep down into the human spirit and had naturally arrived in hell. Scathing. So he's got some very good taste. He also likes modern writers who loves Conrad, like you, Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene. And he sees Graham Greene as the greatest modern English writer alongside T.S. eliot.

[Dominic]

Wow.

[Tabby]

So he's half right.

[Dominic]

I think Graham Green is a good writer, actually, though he's very unfashionable now.

[Tabby]

Oh, I think he's very good. I don't think he's.

[Dominic]

He's not the greatest. The best.

[Tabby]

No.

[Dominic]

Anyway, the question, obviously, is whether he's ever thought about writing a book himself, because he's been doing this course in 1953, 1954, and actually 20 years earlier, he had thought about writing a book. Lisi, his wife, said he thought of writing historical novels set in Sicily during the Garibaldi period, based on the character of his great grandfather, the astronomer Giulio di Lampedusa. And he possibly had made a start on this in the 1930s, but if he did, any notes or drafts have long since been lost, and basically he didn't do it. He was a man who was sunk in passivity and Lassitude for almost all of his life. So he'd sort of. He's the kind of person who would say to you, yes, well, I have thought of writing a book, but I've never quite got around to it, and I probably never will. You know, that kind of person. Yeah. But then at the end of 1954, it's like something changes in him, like someone's flicked a switch. And David Gilmour, his biographer, says it's as though he decided finally to escape from the years of disappointment and to seize basically the opportunity to redeem what he recognized had been a largely wasted life, which I think is quite a sad.

[Tabby]

I think that is such a sad line.

[Dominic]

Yeah. He's basically in his 50s at this point, and he just thinks, I've. Wait, I've completely wasted. He's a very clever man, but he's completely wasted his time on Earth. And I think there's a sense of a ticking clock because he's starting to get breathy. He's a massive smoker. Yeah, he started to get breathing problems. He will be diagnosed shortly with emphysema. And so at the end of 1954, he just thinks to himself, okay, it's now or never, and he starts writing this book. And his plan is basically to write the Sicilian Ulysses. So he says, I'm going to set it on the day of Garibaldi landing in Sicily. Don't worry, we'll explain about Garibaldi in a little bit. Garibaldi landing in Sicily, and it's going to be 24 hours. Like Ulysses is 24 hours. But then he starts writing, and he says, I need more than 24 hours. So he widens the time frame and. And then over the next couple of years, in Cafe Matsada, his favorite hangout, or in his library at home, he sits every morning with a blue biro. So, you know anybody who thinks, oh, this is a very conservative book. This is a book surely written with a fountain pen of the highest quality.

[Tabby]

Yes, exactly. By an aristocrat with a high collar and a sort of beautiful palace.

[Dominic]

No, he's actually scribbling it with blue biro in this crumbling library. And he's very slow, and he spends. I mean, the first chapter alone. He rewrites and rewrites it. It takes him four months.

[Christy]

And.

[Dominic]

And the reason is because he wants to avoid any cliches. He, you know, spent all his life thinking about books, and he wants every single sentence, every word to be packed with imagery and with subtlety and with

[Tabby]

nuance and meaning as well.

[Dominic]

Yes, which I think it absolutely is.

[Tabby]

And you can see this so, so much in the first chapter. So it's the one that he spent the longest on. He wrote several drafts and it is incredibly lush. It's sensuous, you know, it's these frescoes on the palace ceiling. There's this stench of this wounded soldier who crawls into this rose garden and there are ants crawling over his corpse. And it's kind of decorous, but so visceral at the same time. You know, his guts are spilling out onto the soil and there's constantly the sense of something slowly wilting or dying and you almost get. You can almost smell it. And these gorgeous descriptions have kind of got gilded walls and churches or once fine statues and they're all crumbling, so it's all kind of fatigue, heat and dust. And the description of the garden is especially powerful because it really sets the mood. So I'll read it. Scents that were cloying, fleshy and slightly putrid, like aromatic liquids distilled from the relics of certain saints. From a group, from a grove beyond the wall came an erotic waft of early orange blossom. So there you can see he's melding sweet, sensuous scents with decay and death. It's very evocative.

[Dominic]

There's a bit where he's got these roses from Paris. Description of the roses. And they have turned into. Enfeebled by the strong, if languid pull of Sicilian earth, they have turned into objects like flesh colored cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense, almost indecent scent which no French horticulturist would have dared hope for. The prince put one under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the opera. So you've got the decay, you've got the. The sort of cosmopolitan ness, you've got the beauty, but also the sensuality of the prince, the prince's instinct. There's neuroticism, there's exactly an eroticism. So this is what he's working on. He keeps it quiet all this time for two years. He doesn't mention it to his friends. But then on the 8th of March, 1956, he writes in his diary that his Histoire son norm, his History with no Name, is finished. Actually, it's not finished because this is what he's done is not the version that we have today. And a friend of his comes around that day to talk about books. And Lampedusa says, well, what do you think of this? And he gives him an exercise book and says, what do you Think. And then it's like the dam has burst and he starts giving it to all his friends. Look at this. What do you think of this?

[Tabby]

I've written a book that's very human. I can totally see that happening.

[Dominic]

Yeah. He's delighted with himself.

[Tabby]

I'm quite pleased with it.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

What do you think?

[Dominic]

That's exactly what I would do, to be honest.

[Tabby]

Yeah. But I never would have been silent about it in the first place.

[Dominic]

So the question is, will he find a publisher?

[Tabby]

Yeah. So in May 1956, he sends it to the very prestigious Milan publisher Mondadori. By now it has a name, so it's Il Gattopado. So the Leopard. But not in its finished form. It's really just kind of the first two and the last two chapters. So it's missing out, those middle chapters. It's really interesting when you look at how he jigged and rejigged the order of them, because the timeline is quite confusing. So the title, so Gatopado, it doesn't actually mean leopard, it means ocelot or serval, which is an African wildcat. But he seems to have meant. So it's kind of an interesting translation question. He seems to have meant leopard because that is the emblem of the family. And Fabrizio, Don Fabrizio himself, is a big, handsome, arrogant figure and he's very leonine, so leopard suits him. So the publishers, Mondadori, they don't reply till December and then, shockingly, they turn it down. The truth is, I think they just don't know what to make of it. It is quite an unusual book.

[Dominic]

A trend in Italian fiction to be very, very kind of neorealist, all about kind of the working classes. And Italian culture in the 1950s is very politicized. It's very, very. I mean, particularly on the left, people who command the commanding heights of letters in Italy in the 1950s tend to be Marxists. And this book, they look at this like, what is this. Like, this book about a prince in Sicily in 1860s.

[Tabby]

Is he lauding the aristocracy as well? They're wondering.

[Dominic]

Exactly, exactly.

[Tabby]

But they do think it has some merit. And interesting. I read his. His adopted son Gio wrote about it and he said that they had meant to send him kind of not the standard letter rejection letter. They'd meant to say, oh, it is good, but maybe this, but maybe that. But it just got lost in translation and he ended up getting kind of the standard rejection. Anyway, he carries on writing. He produces the middle chapters. But in early 1957, he's been diagnosed with lung cancer. And he dies in his sleep in the early hours of the 23rd of July. And he's only 60. And in his last will he said that there were only three people in the world that he loved and that was his wife, his adopted son and his. His adopted son's fiance. Which is quite sad.

[Dominic]

That is quite sad. But that's not quite the end of the story, is it? Because about a year later, in the spring of 1958, his widow Lisi gets a call. The publishers felt Rinelli actually decided they want to publish it. And there's a. They have a contemporary literature series and it's run by a novelist called Giorgio Bassani, quite a well known novelist in Italy. He rings her up to discuss it and she says, well, actually what you've got is not all of it. He wrote more like, I think there's a chapter about a ball which is

[Tabby]

such a glorious chapter. Imagine if I hadn't been there.

[Dominic]

I know, she says, you know, would you, would you have liked there to be a chapter about a ball? Bassani says, brilliant line. A ball is always a good thing. But how could one get hold of a chapter now? And she says, well, I think he was writing one before he died. I don't know where it is. And so she searches for us and she asks around and her sister who lives in Rome says, oh, there's some typewritten thing that I did for him that's in the house in Rome somewhere.

[Tabby]

Unbelievable.

[Dominic]

Anyway, his sister digs it out, gives it to this bloke Bassani, and Bassani reads it and he's, you know, he's excited. Oh great, he wrote about a ball. And then he's like, oh no, this is absolutely terrible.

[Tabby]

This is terrible.

[Dominic]

Like there's a slight incompetently written, every

[Tabby]

second word is misspelled, right?

[Dominic]

And he says to Lisi and her sister, was there a handwritten original of this typescript? They do some more digging and basically underneath the sofa or something, they find the handwritten notes. And Bassani realizes that Lisa's sister had completely. She was obviously a terrible typist and had missed out loads of words put in, no punctuation. And so the original was much better. And he says, brilliant, we can put this ball chapter. So the ball was what we. That's the scene we read at the beginning is from the ball chapter. So he puts that in the book. The book is published in Milan in the end of 1958. Now, lots of sort of avant garde left wing critics in Italy So literary intellectuals think, oh, this is a shocking book. It's very reactionary in its style and in its content. So there's a fashionable novelist at the time called Vasco Prattolini who wrote. For the last 30 years, we have strained to advance our literature. Lampedusa has put us back 60 years.

[Tabby]

That's clearly such a ridiculous thing to say. Like, what can he possibly mean?

[Dominic]

Yeah, it wouldn't help us. See, he's. They are. They are keen, you know, they. They are keen to write experimental, politically engaged, you know, very 1950s kind of stuff. And what he's basically saying is, how dare somebody write a really good book that is old fashioned, but it gets good reviews in some other newspapers, like La Stampa, very prestigious paper in Italy, and then it wins the top Italian fiction award, the Strega Prize. It starts to sell loads of copies, becomes a word of mouth hit. I think particularly important is the fact Italy is still quite deferential to Britain and France at this point, culturally, especially France. And in France it gets brilliant reviews. The top French Marxist, Louis Aragon, says, it's one of the great novels of this century, one of the greatest novels of all time. And over time, the Italian critics sort of fall into line. So, for example, there was a very eminent Sicilian writer called Leonardo Schiaschia, and he had initially said, it's a terrible book. It's very down on Sicily. I don't like it.

[Tabby]

It is down on Sicily.

[Dominic]

It is down on Sicily. He's right about that. But then 20 years later, Chachier recanted. Lampedusa was unfortunately right and we were wrong, he says, which is, I think, big of him.

[Tabby]

I. It's very big of him.

[Dominic]

And when you look at the sales, the critical reputation of the Leopard, it is by far the most successful Italian book of the 20th century. It's got a rare thing of a book that is simultaneously a great critical hit. As in, anybody who likes literature, who fancies themselves as quite highbrow will tell you they love the Leopard, but at the same time, ordinary readers love it too. So it's. It's regularly voted the most beloved Italian novel of all time.

[Tabby]

Welcome back to the book club. So before the break, we were speaking about Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa. And now we are going to turn to the work itself, his great work, the Leopard. So, Dominic, we kick off in May 1860. What's going on? Give us a little bit of historical context.

[Dominic]

Yes. A little bit of history. So the book opens in May 86, in the middle of the Great historical drama of Italian history, really, the resorgimento, the resurgence. When the book opens, there is no country called Italy, there's a geographical location called Italy, but on the Italian peninsula is basically just this mosaic of different states belonging to different people. So the Selena family here, our hero and his. And his family, they live on the island of Sicily and. Which is part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which is basically the kingdom Naples. And Naples is ruled by the Bourbon dynasty. So this is a sort of offshoot of the ruling house of Spain and indeed previously of France. Sicily itself is very rural, very backward. People work on the land and this sort of feudal system dominated by a handful of rich aristocratic families. But at the beginning of the book, this world is under threat because Italian unification is underway and it's spearheaded by the rich northern kingdom of Sardinia, confusingly ruled by the House of Savoy, with its capital in Turin, but people often describe it as Piedmont. So basically there's four different names.

[Tabby]

Well, I was reading up on this yesterday. I had to get off a map,

[Dominic]

let's just say Sardinia for short. So they are pushing a project of Italian unification where they want all the states to come under the rule of the, you know, the kings of Sardinia. And in May 1860, the Sardinians sent a. An expedition under the revolutionary nationalist firebrand Garibaldi with their red shirts to land in Sicily. It's the expedition of a thousand because there's about a thousand of them. They land at Marsala on 11 May, they fight their way inland. Fighting breaks out in Palermo at the end of the month. It's sort of local. There's an uprising against the Bourbons. By June, Palermo has surrendered, the Bourbons have been kicked out and Garibaldi has won. And that's the backdrop to the first couple of chapters of the book. And at the time this was seen as an incredible feat, that basically Garibaldi in his red shirts had landed. They had defeated the armies of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and toppled the regime. And this inspired great excitement and adulation on kind of liberal types, you know, sort of people who believe in progress and people who are kind of well meaning and don't want to, you know, they're progressives, I suppose, and all over the world people are very excited about Garibaldi, hence the biscuits.

[Tabby]

Rubbish. Biscuits.

[Dominic]

No, Garibaldi is a great biscuit. Tabby.

[Christy]

What?

[Tabby]

I disagree.

[Dominic]

You don't like a Garibaldi biscuit?

[Tabby]

There's nothing for me.

[Dominic]

Well, we're going to have to Pursue this later in the summer, because otherwise we run out of time. But surely we could do a live biscuit tasting.

[Tabby]

Yeah. With rum.

[Dominic]

Where's the rum come from? There. That's a bit left field.

[Tabby]

I don't know. I just thought that would be a nice touch.

[Dominic]

So the autumn of 1860, Sicily holds a referendum, a plebiscite, on whether to join this new kingdom of Italy under Sardinian rule. And this is what Fabrizio is thinking about in chapter three of the book, this. This plebiscite. And in the book, people who've read the book will know the plebiscite is rigged. And in Donna Fugata, their country estate, the result is 512 votes yes and 0 votes against. And Fabrizio's kind of huntsman retainer, Don Ciccio, is absolutely furious about this because he says, I voted no and no one counted my vote. And actually, this is the reality, because in Santa Margherita, in reality, which was the model for the country estate, there were 999 electors in Santa Margherita, and 993 of them supposedly voted yes. And actually, when you look at the whole island of Sicily, the official figures show that 99.8% of them voted yes. And then three quarters of the districts of the island, nobody at all voted no. And this was obviously totally untrue.

[Tabby]

Yeah, it's pretty corrupt.

[Dominic]

Anyway, Sicily joins the new kingdom of Italy. And everybody who supports this says, oh, this is absolutely going to be brilliant. So in the book, the prince has an accountant, a kind of steward called Russo, who's very much in favor of all this, who says to the prince, we'll have liberty, security, lighter taxes, ease trade, everything will be better. But obviously, anyone reading this book in the 1950s would know that things did not just get better. Basically, what happened was the feudal elites didn't want to accept the changes that had come in. There were lots of revolts by the peasants because the peasants complained they were having to pay more taxes under the new regime. They didn't like the northerners, the. I mean, Sicilians still do not like what they see as the imposition of the heavy hand of, you know, the Italian mainland. And this is actually the era after the Risorgimento, when you see the rise of the Mafia because the old feudal order is breaking down. The local elites get these companies of armed men to defend their estates and stuff, and these, over time, evolve into the first Mafia clans. This is what explains the very grimly ironic tone of the book. Whenever Lampedusa is Talking about politics, because his readers will know that Sicily doesn't move into this shiny utopian future, that the future for Sicily is stagnation and violence. And, you know, his characters are often trapped by their own idealism.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Because they don't see all this coming. They don't know this. They don't know what we know.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

Although one of them does know. And this is a character who can see into the future because he's a skeptic and because he's a kind of small C conservative and he is so cynical. So he thinks, well, nothing ever changes, and if it does change, it gets worse. And this is the guy who speaks for Lampedusa, who is the protagonist, the book. Don Fabrizio and Tabby. I think you described him as the sex. Didn't you describe him as the sexiest character in fiction?

[Tabby]

He's a very, very attractive character because despite the fact that he has this incredible kind of foresight or insight into the. The fact that his world, the world as he knows it, is declining and fading away, he kind of takes it in his stride. He maintains his sort of sense of mastery. He's never embittered, he's languidly laconic about the whole thing. And he's a very sensual character. So in the first chapter, he visits a brothel in Palermo after dinner. And it's kind of a sign of his dry, slightly ironic character that he makes his kind of confessor, his priest, Father Perrone, come with him.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby]

He drops him off, which is so amusing. Yeah. And then there's a very funny scene when the priest asks to speak to him and he's having. You know, his size is constantly emphasized. He's a very like leonine man. He's massive but not fat. And there's a scene where he's having a bath and then he invites the priest in. He stands up and he's completely naked. And this poor little priest is kind of awed by Exactly.

[Dominic]

By the size of him, the vastness of him.

[Tabby]

Yeah. But this first chapter, it also gives you an insight into his reflectiveness and his self loathing. He thinks about Marianina, so she's the young woman at the brothel. And he feels sad at the thought of. Of that manhandled youthful flesh, that resigned. That resigned lubricity. And he thinks of himself as a pig, just a pig. But so he's never one thing at once, and he remains, to me anyway, a very central figure right to the end, even though he's kind of depleted and exhausted and apathetic and he's intelligent enough to see that his world is dying, but he's cultivated enough to observe that death with kind of beautiful serenity and enduring charm. And his spiritual exhaustion is kind of more appalling, thanks to this physical size, because he is. It's. It's like he's a. He's a God who's been made into a mortal. He doesn't belong in the human world, where it's. With its indignities and its vulgarities and its politics that don't really matter. And this is why he loves astronomy. You know, something that dwarfs human affairs. It's constant and it's ordered.

[Dominic]

Yeah, There's a sense of him being above the petty grind. Isn't there shabby compromises, politics? And so when he's actually invited to join the new Senate of the Kingdom of Italy, he says, no, it's not for me. And he's yearning for something. He's got this kind of. There is a definite yearning to him, isn't there? There's yearning for something more profound, more metaphysical. Hence the stars.

[Tabby]

In a way, he is yearning for the old age. You know, when he goes to Donna Fugate, he's reassured by the peasant's kind of obsequiousness. It reassures him. But at the same time, there's always something more, because he's much more than just a mortal man, in a sense. For instance, there's a scene when he's talking to Father Pirone about astronomy and his own observatory. And, you know, he sends reports to foreign scientists, and he explains the reason he loves stars is they were distant, they were omnipotent, and at the same time, they were docile to his calculations. Just the contrary to humans, always too near, so weak and yet so quarrelsome. And at the end of the book, on his deathbed, he thinks about the rare moments in his life he. When that he was truly happy, and these hours of being in the observatory are among them. And when he got a letter complimenting him on some calculations that he did on Halley's Comet or something, and then when he got a medal from the Sorbonne. And the earthly sphere is never quite enough for him.

[Dominic]

Well, that's the thing. He's a complicated character. There's different sides to him. He's the patriarch. He's a man of flesh and blood. He's an intellectual. But I think the thing that makes him so satisfying as a character, for me, cynical people are often very good observers of others.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

You know, they're watching for what's going on under the surface. And as a very cynical, aloof person, he is a brilliant observer of his world and of himself. And I was thinking about this sort of reflectiveness of him and the way in which this is done through this kind of stream of consciousness style.

[Christy]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

I was thinking how funny it is because we did Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf a few weeks ago, and I know there are some readers who really dislike. They dislike even the thought of Mrs. Dalloway and even the thought of Virginia Woolf.

[Tabby]

It annoys them.

[Dominic]

It annoys them. And yet they would say of this book, oh, it's absolutely brilliant. I love this leopard. Oh, one of the great books. Body. Blah. But actually, the style and the techniques, I think, are not so different. So Lampedusa, who liked, you know, a new Virginia Woolf's work, flashbacks, memory, stream of consciousness, everything filtered through the subjectivity of one central character. Then passages of very lush description. You know, this is the kind of thing that you get in the kind of modernist writers of the 1920s and kind of fragmented. A fragmented narrative that's made up of a series of set pieces.

[Tabby]

Jumbled timelines.

[Dominic]

Exactly, Jumbled timelines. You know, Lampedusa is clearly modeling this on some of the writers, the 20th century writers that he's reading. But because it's set in the past, because it's by a man about a man, and because it involves, like, Garibaldi and whatnot, people don't seem to notice.

[Tabby]

And it's by an aristocrat about an aristocrat in the last years of his. Of his age, really? In a sense, yeah.

[Dominic]

So the other question about Fabrizio is actually whether he is Lampedusa himself. So we said before that he. The model for him is Prince Giulio, Lampaducer's ancestor, the astronomy and whatnot. A lot of Lampedusa's friends said, you have given Don Fabrizio your own personality.

[Tabby]

But I think it's funny that he wrote that himself.

[Dominic]

Yes, exactly. People are saying that I've done Fabrizio,

[Tabby]

that I remind them of the dashing and extremely sexy 9. 9.

[Dominic]

There are different. So the pessimism, the sardonic dry wit, the skepticism about human nature, the introverts and politics. Yeah, the solitariness, the politics, all of those things they have in common. They're also both very passive, actually. So we said that Don Fabrizio is an alpha male, but he actually doesn't really do anything. At one point, he's described in the book as watching the ruin of his own class and his own inheritance without ever making still less wanting to make any move towards saving it. So he's just watching, but not acting. Both of them feel that they're trapped between two worlds. So the prince says at one point, very celebrated line, I belong to an unlucky generation, swung between the old world and the new, and I find myself ill at ease in both. Which is very Lampedusa. But. Well, I mean, you're extreme. You're just as cynical as he is, Tabby. So the portrait of a very, very sexy, sensual, charismatic character. This is basically Lampedusa, as he would like to have been.

[Tabby]

Yeah, but that's. I think that's quite touching, you know, for an awkward, shy person who loses himself and kind of the great deeds of others in books, of course, there's a little. Going to be a little bit of wish fulfillment in there.

[Dominic]

Yeah, of course. What about the other characters?

[Tabby]

Yeah, there are two other main characters that kind of grab the reader's attention, and the first of these is Tancredi. So this is his nephew in the book, Don Fabrizio's nephew. And Lampeduzzo is said to have based Tancredi on his young cousin, Giocchino Lanza, and he adopted him before his death, and he was extremely fond of him. I was reading a lot of his letters to him last night, and they're. They're quite touching. And he was one of the young men that went to Lampedusa's book groups. And in a letter to a friend, he wrote that Tancredi was morally and physically geo, you know, because he's funny and he's charming and idealistic and I've never seen the film, but who plays him in the film?

[Dominic]

In the film, he's played by Alain Delon. And he is so handsome, so very handsome and so dashing. Yeah, he's really, really smooth and charismatic in a slightly lounge lizard way. But I think that's how he is in the book. It's a bit too smooth.

[Tabby]

I think that's why Tan Crady is actually a brilliantly complex character, because when I first read the book, I found him very attractive. You know, charismatic, excitable, full of energy, charming, sinewy, lithe, wicked. Totally my type.

[Dominic]

I think the sinewy in lithe. I think that's your projecting on that. I don't think that's in the book.

[Tabby]

But he's a kind of this slim figure, isn't he? Maybe that is in my head. God. Fantasizing about Dan Grady. But then when I read it this time, I found him much less attractive. And also he wears that sexy eye patch that's automatically.

[Dominic]

Yeah, of course. And another long. When he wears the eyepatch. Does look very dashing this time.

[Tabby]

I read it. I read him as much. More the survivor. He's a better survivor than the rest of his class. So while he's milking his own class and his uncle for money, he's turning his back on them and he's infiltrating the new world. So via, you know, he. He joins Garibaldi and he, you know, will learn through his marriage. He's a survivor. He is a bit of a social climber. He's a great adapter. And this is why in the book, his role is also symbolic, because he represents elements of the old guard who embraced the cause of Italian unification. But you never really know with Tancredi if it's because he's genuinely idealistic or if it's because he knows this is the only way to survive. Because that's the thing. I think he's quite naughty and quite calculating. And that's why Don Fabrizio both admires and distrusts him, because, you know, at least he knows that Tancredi is the only part of him that will survive in the new world. But the way that Tancredi really lets himself down is he's. He's quite cruel and insensitive and particularly to his cousin Concetta. So she is the prince's daughter.

[Dominic]

Yeah. And she's in. She's very serious, isn't she? Very pious.

[Tabby]

Very pious.

[Dominic]

She's completely in love with him.

[Tabby]

She's totally in love with him. She's, you know, she's very upset by the eye patch and stuff because. I don't know why, she's just very excited by that.

[Dominic]

Well, he destroys.

[Tabby]

She should lean into it.

[Dominic]

He destroys her entire life by telling an inappropriate.

[Tabby]

Yeah, a bad anecdote. You know, she is born at the worst time because she's going to live to see everything that she knew disappear around her, but she's still a part of it. Bit like Lampitiza. So the antidote that destroys Concetta's life. So Tancredi and his mates capture a convent, and the elderly nuns are frightened that they'd be raped. And then one of Tancredi's friends shouts, nothing doing, sisters. We'll be back when you have some novices. It's great banter. And then they leave the nuns with, I quote, their tongues hanging out. Tancredi is implying that, you know, that lusting after these lovely young men.

[Dominic]

The nuns were.

[Tabby]

The nuns were. Which is poor from Tancredi, I think. I think all of this is poor from Tancredi. Yeah. But then Concetta, who, you know, weeps on her way to Mass, is so appalled by this. Whereas her love rival and foil, Angelica, who I was voicing in the opening reading, and she represents everything that's new and predatory. And she says that what fine lads you must have been. How I wish I'd been there with you. And, you know, you so know that girl that jumps on the bandwagon with the boys. Cause she kind of wants to be fancied by them a little bit. And then Tancredi says, had you been there, Signora, we'd have had no need for novices. So top wooing there.

[Dominic]

Yeah. Angelica loves this.

[Tabby]

Angelica loves it. Yeah. And Concetta's horrified and she bursts into tears and she storms off. And I actually feel very sorry for Concetta. I think hers is a very sad trajectory.

[Dominic]

So what about Angelica? So let's talk about Angelica. So the important thing about her is she's from a different class, she's from a lower class. She's the daughter of this rising corrupt businessman stroke politician called Don Calogo Rusedara. And so she is the representative of the middle classes.

[Tabby]

But she goes after what she wants, which is Tancredi, with, you know, sensuality and her attractiveness. And she, you know, that's why her relationship with Tan Crady is quite. Is a very cynical portrayal of love. Because they're both. They both want something from the other one. They're in love with each other, but it's not love. And they're excited by the performance and the possibility of what they could achieve together. Whereas Concetta loves him truly and kind of emotionally.

[Dominic]

She's in love with being in love. But she's not in love with him. Isn't she, Angelica?

[Tabby]

He'll give her a title. He'll give her validation.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And she will give him a passage into. Into the future.

[Dominic]

Well, she'll give him money. I mean, she's bringing loads of money and she's gorgeous. So they're both prizes for each other. They see each other as a prize rather than as a person, I think. So, you know, when he tells his terrible anecdotes, his rape anecdote, which is poor from him, and she laughs and in the book, she gives this. It she describes as giving you a strident laugh. But in the film, which I love, she gives. It's Claudia Cardinale and she, who is, I have to say, the most wonderful actress, Tammy. And she gives this incredibly husky, dirty laugh at this anecdote.

[Tabby]

Oh, my God.

[Dominic]

And this is the clue to her personality.

[Christy]

It is.

[Dominic]

But there is a kind of earthiness and a sensuality to her. And actually, just on the. You know, it's easy to be very cynical about the romance between them, but there's a chapter which is actually brilliantly done in a film, when they are exploring the palace. And it's got loads. It's got so many disused rooms. It's all very dusty. You know, they're unlocking doors. And this. The two of them will go off on these expeditions together. And I think these are. Without sort of betraying myself too much and getting into therapy. I think these are. This is a very, very erotic scene.

[Tabby]

No, no, in truth, it actually is, you know, in a book that is so much about sort of the passing of time and the law and loss. It's a book that's. It's. It's a passage that's full of movement and excitement and possibility. This is not a book overflowing with possibility. It tends to be about loss.

[Dominic]

But the. But the eroticism of it comes from the fact that the possibility. It's possibility but not actuality.

[Tabby]

Exactly.

[Dominic]

Because they are.

[Tabby]

Exactly.

[Dominic]

They are simmering with desire for each other as they explore the palace, and they will have a snog or whatever, but they can never fully act on their desires. So as Lampedusa says, the dangers of stopping the game and drawing the prize became more and more pressing for both. In the end, they searched no longer, but went off, absorbed into the remotest rooms, those from which no cry could reach anyone from the outside world. But there never would be a cry, only invocations and low whimpers. There they would both lie, close but innocent, pitying each other. So they can't bring themselves to kind of go the whole hog, as it were, but they are. There's this sort of simmering electricity between them, if electricity can simmer.

[Tabby]

It's so sexy from Lampedusa. It really is. I think it is sexy. It's a very sexy book. And. But then. But then that is also. You know, what's so kind of creeping about it or depressing about it, is that we get. We get kind of a look into their future. And, you know, when it is, when it finally is realized and the possibility becomes reality, and we kind of learn that they end up being quite unhappy together and this is the best that it will ever be for them. The bit when they hadn't quite captured each other. It's the old thing about the chase and wanting what you can't have.

[Dominic]

It's one of the best examples in literature, I think, of the chase.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So this is another example of how this is not just a historical novel. Because what he's doing here is a very, very modernist sort of trick of puncturing the illusions of the present by suddenly, abruptly throwing forward into the future. So he will say, you're. You're absolutely loving this. You know, you've immersed yourself. You're wallowing in the eroticism of these passages.

[Tabby]

You're tricked into thinking it's a love story for a moment as well.

[Dominic]

And then suddenly he says, these would be the best days ever for Angelica. And John Crady lives later to be so variegated, so erring against the inevitable background of sorrow. But of that they were still unaware in their pursuit of a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be. Made of nothing but smoke and wind. You're like, what? This is. This is all gonna go. Yeah. It's gonna turn to ashes. When he goes on to say, when they were old and uselessly wise, their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret. So he's really kind of stabbing your romantic illusions about this couple.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

And that's what he does throughout, is he'll set things up and then he'll say, in the future, of course, they would end up hating each other and they would all be incredibly corrupt and miserable.

[Tabby]

But it's the same with that, with the wonderful ball scene, which is glorious. It's kind of the climax of the novel. And it's when Angelica asks the prince to dance. And for a moment he feels virile again. And then it's punctured almost immediately. So. From the ceiling, and this is what I was referring to earlier. From the ceiling, the gods, reclining on gilded couches, gaze down, smiling and inexorable as a summer sky. They thought themselves eternal. But a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was to prove the contrary in 1943.

[Dominic]

That's such a good sentence because that bit where he. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[Tabby]

Yeah. It's romance and it's classicism and it's. And it's eternal. And then it's like the mundane.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

Quality of what punctures it. And that's. Is also what kind of the book is about. He's not saying that aristocracy are great or that the middle classes are terrible. He's, you know, pretty negative about both. But he's saying, you know, this mundane order of. Of kind of the bourgeoisie or whatever come up.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby]

And they take on the guys of the aristocracy to put on their uniforms, but they're made of, you know, nothing is getting better.

[Dominic]

No, it's just. No, no, no.

[Tabby]

It's continuity. Change is continuity.

[Dominic]

Pittsburgh is replacing Palermo. That's basically the sort of. If you sum up the book in a few words and actually that you see, the. The film doesn't have any of that at all because it doesn't have the narrative voice. So you don't have the bomb in Petsburgh, Pennsylvania. You don't have it throwing forward to Tancredi and Angelica the bomb, Angelica's future, their disappointment when they finally get together. Actually, the film just wallows in the glamour, and it's a wonderful film for that, but it doesn't have that extra layer, I think.

[Tabby]

Yeah. And the fact that when he looks around, it's like a funeral pyre. The bull scene. Isn't it magnificent? For the last time. And he literally, by dancing with Angelica, kind of embraces his death. And he looks around him and all the faces around him are kind of sad or ghoulish or. And you couldn't convey that.

[Dominic]

And I think. I mean, you mentioned the beginning, the first chapter, the sort of sense of decay and the sort of putrid rottenness of the garden, as well as the beauty and the sensuality. And I think that runs through the whole book. The idea. Well, there's a couple of ideas about decline or change. So the first idea, I guess, is that Sicily can never change, because Sicily, of all places, is uniquely resistant to change. It's trapped. It's trapped by its own history and by its own culture, I guess.

[Tabby]

Yeah. And this is captured in the Prince's meeting with the Northern politician Chevalier, who comes to ask him to join the new Senate. So, first of all, he says, we'll never change because we've been so deeply marked by colonialism, you know, wave upon wave of different conquerors in Sicily. Yeah. So he says, we are old, Chevalier. We're very old. For over 25 centuries, we've been bearing the weight of superb, heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own. We're as white as you are, and as the Queen of England. And yet for 2, 500 years we've been a colony. I don't say that in complaint. It's our fault, but even so, we're worn out and exhausted. But then he says something that's Slightly different. He says we'll never change because there's something uniquely Sicilian that makes it impossible. It's the barren landscape, the blistering heat, it's the atmosphere of Sicily, the climate forces that have formed our minds together with and perhaps more than alien pressure and varied invasions, this landscape which knows no mean between sensuous sag and hellish drought.

[Dominic]

Yeah, and that's. He's saying basically we've become, we're lazy, he says we're arrogant. You know, we think Sicily is perfect and we don't want to improve and you know, change happens, but basically people, you know, generations of people have tried to change Sicily and the change always is evanescent and it collapses. Yeah, because Sicily is enduring and it's old and it's, you know, nothing will ever be different. That's. This is fatalism, I guess, that he

[Tabby]

has new beginnings are an illusion. Humans are fundamentally self interested, nothing can be done. So just like he is, he's impassively rolls with it.

[Dominic]

So that's the idea that nothing ever changes and everything is the same. But then the other idea, which is slight tension and contradiction to that is actually things are changing, but they're just getting worse.

[Tabby]

Yeah.

[Dominic]

So people who write, you know, whenever somebody in, writes an article in Unherd about the leopard, which seems to happen like every month, and they'll quote the leopard and they'll say, they'll quote this line from Tancredi. When Tancredi says to the prince, why am I backing the revolution? Because if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

[Tabby]

Such a famous line, isn't it?

[Dominic]

And anybody who's like a, sort of think of themselves as a, as a thinking conservative, I'm a cerebral conservative, they will always love quoting this line. Like some things have to change, you know, you're David Cameron or something and you're introducing gay marriage or whatever it might be and you're doing so precisely so that things can stay the same. Stay the same, exactly. But Fabrizio doesn't think that things are staying the same. He thinks things are actively decaying. And actually Lampedusa clearly thinks that to some degree because this character we mentioned, Angelica's father, Don Cologgio Rusidara, the guy who wears the wrong coat to dinner, which is a terrible thing.

[Tabby]

Terrible.

[Dominic]

He's dressed in an inappropriately fancy coat,

[Tabby]

a tail coat that is embarrassing, to be fair.

[Dominic]

Anyway, he's corrupt, he's ambitious, he's small minded, he's slimy, he's mean spirited Don Fabrizio feels a loathing for him at the ball, actually, he says it feels a loathing for him, a loathing for the rise of this man and a hundred others like him. Their obscure intrigues, their tenacious greed and avarice. And this is bound up with the sense of death that hangs over the palaces. And the Prince makes the same point to the northern politician chevalier. He says, things will be different, but worse. We were the leopards and lions, but those who will take our places will be little jackals and hyenas. So on the one hand, Sicily is always the same, but then on the other hand, actually Sicily is getting worse because the people who succeed us are corrupt and vicious and you know all of this.

[Tabby]

But you can see why liberals would say, oh, that's because the people coming up are not of the old order, you know, they're new people, they're kind of industrious or whatever it may be.

[Dominic]

Yeah, of course they would say this is the snobbery, this is the snobbery of the old elite.

[Tabby]

But Lampedusa, he did, he did personally disdain political liberalism. I mean, you can undoubtedly see that he called it play acting, a noisy romantic play with a few spots of blood on the comic costumes. So obviously the great liberal totem in Italy is the risorgamento. But in the leopard, this is basically, it's all just a fraud. You know, you see that in the count up of the plebiscite, and that's why it's so important in the story. It's a symbol of the dishonesty and the corruption of the whole project, which is seemingly introducing kind of a utopian new future where everything will be different and there'll be equality. And Lampedusa is saying that it never meant anything, it was just corrupt.

[Dominic]

So the prince reflects that Italy was born that night when they all voted to join the kingdom of Italy in the plebiscite. But he says the same night something died. A newborn babe. Good faith. Just the very child that should have been cared for most, who strengthening would have justified all the silly vandalisms. But I mean, it's a fair point, you know, this, this. He's basically saying Italy was born corrupt, it was born a fraud, meretricious, because we've. They falsified the results of the referendum and they just couldn't allow people to choose freely, that from the very beginning it was tainted. So there's a sense that there's a. The decline and the decay of built in politically. So when I first read this book, I thought A lot about the politics and the history of it. But reading it this time, I think, particularly because, you know, we've done so many books that are quite reflective in this show. At not least Mrs. Dalloway, which I thought of a lot when I was reading this. Yeah, Mrs. Dalloway, rather like. This is a book about death, and death runs through this book from the beginning. Lampedusa writes it at a point when he's feeling that time is ticking. He's about to be diagnosed with lung cancer. His own death is very much on his mind. And I think, even though he might have started it thinking, I'm going to write a book about the 1860s, I think ultimately this is a book about a man who's coming to terms with his own mortality and also who feels

[Tabby]

that his whole life has been slightly futile.

[Dominic]

Yes. That his life has been wasted. Really. Exactly like Lamperduce's life. So the very first sentence of the book is the last line of the. The rosary, isn't it? Nunc et in hora mortis nostri Amen now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Very first line. Then the. The palace is compared to a cemetery. It literally smells of death. Because the body of this dead soldier that they found in the garden, Fabrizio says to Chevalier, the guy from the north, all Sicilian self expression, even the most violence, is really a wish fulfillment. It's a hankering for oblivion. Our shooting and knifing, a hankering for death, our languor, our exotic ices, a hankering for voluptuous immobility that is for death. Again, they're basically. I mean, this is. This is the kind of thing that outsiders love to say about Sicily, but actually this is a Sicilian himself saying it. We're in love with death. And all. Everything is. Everything is bound up with this kind of longing for oblivion and this awareness of our own mortality.

[Tabby]

And even when the prince goes to the ball, you know, it's everywhere. Like, you know, it's in the first sentence that you say, it's in the roses. And then at the ball he sees a priest rushing to give somebody the last sacraments and he spends the whole thing. It's why it's so conflicting, because you have this beautiful radiant room and this beautiful girl and dancing and sensuality. But he spends the whole thing feeling like slightly like he's standing on the outside, as if he's sort of walking towards his own death.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And then he goes into the library and he sees a picture of a dying man. So that's you know the lines from Tancredy that I read at the beginning, Black suits you perfectly. But what are you looking at? Are you paying court to death? And obviously, as is typical for the young, death isn't a reality, it's a concept.

[Dominic]

Yes.

[Tabby]

And then even when he walks home under the stars, he passes a wagon carrying bulls from the slaughterhouse, blood dripping onto the cobble. So again, it's that same contrast between the decorous, stately man, well dressed, walking from a ball, and there's blood on the cobblestones.

[Dominic]

Exactly. And this is where the film ends. So I know you haven't seen the film, but the film ends right here with him walking home on the cobblestones. But actually, the book has two more chapters that actually hammer this point home. So the first, suddenly the book, we're no longer in the 1860s, we're in 1883, and Fabrizio is dying. And he is thinking about those times when he has been happy, and these times, the sort of flecks of gold or something they're described as in his otherwise kind of humdrum and disappointing life, they are connected with the different sides of his personality. So they're his family and especially his friendship with Tancredi. They're his sensuality. So the.

[Tabby]

You know, the brothels.

[Dominic]

Yes, the cravats, you remember, spray cravats.

[Tabby]

I think you will think over your greater suits when the time comes.

[Dominic]

Yeah, I might. You think so? I don't think I think about suits. I think about my greatest podcasts, maybe.

[Tabby]

Oh, do you have more in the locker?

[Dominic]

Yeah. There he has become Zabi.

[Tabby]

I pity you.

[Dominic]

And then he thinks about astronomy, how much his intellectual quest for something fixed, for something meaningful, which is the stars, that.

[Tabby]

Exactly. That actually matters greater than meaningless politics and foibles.

[Dominic]

Yeah. And you loved the scene, didn't you? You loved this chapter.

[Tabby]

I do, but as in, I love it in the way that I think it's very sad and quite sort of moving, because the way that this great man faces death with this very serene mathematical sort of sense of perusal, like he's flicking through it, and very accepting. He's laconic, as always, and his realization of the insignificance of it all and how, as it turns out, politics change, none of it matters, it's just death. And also the fact that it all happens in this kind of shabby hotel, and this is a man that has come from gilded palaces and rosaries. There's something very sad about it. But I think the bit that I was disturbed by even more than that is the final chapter. And I remember, even when I was 13, and it is the most blackly ironic and skeptical scene of all. It's a very depressing note to go out on in some ways. So Concetta and her sisters, now in their 70s, and they're withered spinsters and they're quarreling over their inheritance and they're brooding on the past, and all they've done with their lives is collect images of death, essentially. You know, photos of relatives and friends who are dead. The stuffed dog Benedico, and that's actually Lampedusa said in a letter to. In a letter to Gio, he said, oh, he's the heart of the novel. And relics from the past.

[Christy]

Right.

[Dominic]

But they're kind of mad. They've basically been collecting fake relics, the

[Tabby]

finger bones of the great, great, great. I don't know.

[Dominic]

Yeah, Some saints.

[Tabby]

Duke of Selena or whatever.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

And then we learn that Tancredi, with all his vibrancy and dashing youth, he's been dead a long time and he just became another corrupt politician. And his life with Angelica, you know, so full of sensuous promise, has just been tempestuous and interrupted.

[Dominic]

Interrupted, meaning they've had affairs, they've had separations.

[Tabby]

So, you know, he almost put. There was a chapter that he excluded from the edition of the book that he tried to, you know, that he was sending out when he died to get published. Yeah. And it was a scene of. I think it's the prince or the princess rushing to stop Angelica from embarking upon her first affair to save.

[Dominic]

No way.

[Tabby]

Tancredi's feelings. Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic]

And the most shocking thing, given how much I love Angelica, is that she's getting old. I mean, that's fair enough. Lampedusa's cruel to her, I think he says, Very cruel. The illness which was to transform her into a wretched specter three years later, was already active but still secreted deep within her.

[Tabby]

It's horrible.

[Dominic]

So basically, you know, she's obviously got cancer, but she doesn't know it. When we see her for the last time, she takes us back a little bit to the garden at the beginning. The beautiful flowers which have the seeds of their kind of rottenness and, you know, within them and about to wither and die. And that's true of Angelica, too, that she has become, you know, a corrupt and meretricious and whatnot, but also she's on the. She's become rotten. And this was the point when I slightly thought he was overdoing it. That the cynicism and the emphasis on everything is rotten and everything is putrid. I thought, come on, give them a. Would you never give your characters a tiny bit of true happiness or of a lightness as well as the shade?

[Tabby]

I think he would say, though, that's just the real world, though, isn't it?

[Dominic]

I've literally found a writer even more cynical than I am, and I never

[Christy]

thought that would happen.

[Katie K]

Happen.

[Dominic]

What about the last image of the book? That's a really strange image. So basically, the church authorities come and they say all these relics are fake. You have to throw them away. And Concetta is feeling very empty and miserable, and she says, okay, get rid of the dog. Get rid of the stuffed dog, which had been Fabrizio's favorite dog. And they throw him. A servant throws him out of the window. And the last lines, virtually the last lines of the book, during the flight down from the window, its form recomposed itself for an instant in the air. There seemed to be dancing, a quadruped with long whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust. And there's this really strange image, I think, so. The culture editor of the New Statesman, Tanjil Rashid.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Friend of the show.

[Dominic]

Friend of the show who wrote about our show when it came out. He wrote an essay about the leopard last year, I think it was. And he said, in a way, this image is a kind of repudiation of conservatism. So the stuffed dog, he said, is tradition. Pathetically, pointlessly embalmed. Unworthy of holding on to.

[Tabby]

Yeah. Holding on to the past.

[Dominic]

Yeah. But I also think maybe you could say that bit of the dog in flight out of the window, that's like us in our life. We're thrown up into the air and we seem to be dancing as the dog is. We seem to be moving, and then we just land on the ground in a heap of dust. And that's our lives. Tapia, I don't want to depress you, but that's your life.

[Tabby]

I don't know, though. I don't know. I think. I think it's slightly. It could be interpreted slightly more hopeful than that. You know, it could be that. That it's. It's almost like for a moment, he comes back to life and he has the.

[Dominic]

Yeah.

[Tabby]

The vibrance and the movement of life. And in that moment, it matters. And it matters to live for a moment, even if you do end up in the dust. And the other thing That I think is actually, although it's very sad, slightly counters the kind of absence of idealism in the book, which is the fact that we learn. Concetta learns at the very end that, you know, that Tancredi actually did love her and he wanted to kiss her, but her emotional hesitation repelled him. And so he went after the much more vibrant Angelica.

[Dominic]

But do you know what, Tabby. But then that's undercut straight away because Angelica is in the coach going back or something. Isn't she? With the bloke who told the story? And she says Tanqueraine never liked her at all.

[Tabby]

But you would say that of your love rival, I think.

[Dominic]

I suppose you would. Well, yeah. Yeah. You read into it what you want. I'm surprised you're side of Moon Concetta in this.

[Tabby]

I know what's happening.

[Dominic]

Guilt, I think. Yeah. All right, we're gonna give our verdicts now. There's so much to talk about with the leopard. It's such a wonderful book. I really, really recommend it to the listeners.

[Tabby]

We.

[Dominic]

I wanted to mark this because I. We've done dead dogs. I was going to suggest stuffed dogs, but Tabby being Tabby, the dogs have

[Tabby]

had a hard enough time from us as it is. I would like to rate it out of sexy eye patches. Out of 10.

[Dominic]

Sexy eye patches out of 10. Okay, so I'll go first. It's limiting it to call it a great historical novel or the greatest historical novel. I think it's much better than that. I think it is a great 20th century novel about memory, about nostalgia, about disappointed hopes, and about how you make sense of your life as it moves towards its end. So. And I think it's great on history and all of that kind of thing, but that's not what I took from it this time, actually. What I took was the. The portrait of this very thoughtful, reflective man who's wasted his life and who's looking at his life and the lives of others with this kind of very skeptical, cynical eye. And I think it's beautifully done and I think it's a beautiful literary artifact of this book. I'm deducting your point because I wondered on rereading.

[Tabby]

Because he's hard on Angelica.

[Dominic]

Yeah, because he's hard on Angelica. Exactly. Because I wondered on rereading whether the cynicism and the skepticism was a bit overwhelming and whether they could. You know, some of his friends said of Lampedusa that he could be a massive misanthrope and he has a very dark view of human nature and Sometimes possibly bit too dark. So I'm gonna give it nine out of 10. But it's a brilliant book and everyone should read it. What about you, Tabby?

[Tabby]

I'm gonna give it a 10 out of 10. I just. I love the prose. I just think, you know, as I was reading it, I kept highlighting and highlighting. It ended up being kind of whole pages because it was so perfect, you know, it is a piece of art. It genuinely is. It conveys so much kind of deep melancholy, like ironic humor, the cynicism. And it kind of does the creep of death, which should be such a depressing thing. And it is a depressing thing, but it does it in these slightly rosy hues, which means it kind of tricks you. And then at the last moment, you realize what it's all been about. It works on so many levels, you know, it has such incredible emotional complexity. Decline, contemplation, an element of human melodrama, cynicism. There is the prince himself. You know, it's a pleasure to exist in his mind and his. His thoughts are never one thing. He's never one thing. And the loneliness of being the one that sees and yet doesn't hate, despite being the one that sees, is a great thing. And it manages to turn decline into beauty whilst also laying bare the putrid kind of vileness of it at the same time. And I don't even. And I'm not going to take off that mark for cynicism because I think. I mean, obviously I'm a misanthrope, but also because it's colored with dark humour and there is beauty and value amidst all the darkness, I would say. And it has just such grace to it and elegance.

[Dominic]

It does indeed. Actually, one thing we haven't mentioned, obviously, we're reading it in translation. The translator was Archibald Colquhoun and I think he did it. I mean, I was about to say, I think he did a brilliant job. As though. I know. As though I can read Italian. I can't.

[Tabby]

Famous master of tongues.

[Dominic]

Anyway, the English language version is absolutely brilliant.

[Tabby]

Yeah. But if you want deep dives into things like this, the translation, the translator, you know, even more exciting things, all you have to do is get your hands on our brand new newsletter.

[Dominic]

Oh, very well done, Tabby. That's a nice link.

[Tabby]

Thanks. Yeah. And this will have, you know, stories behind the story, bits that we may have missed out.

[Dominic]

You can read a feedback.

[Tabby]

Yeah, yeah. Bit of feedback. You can. You can discuss with other people what you thought about it. You can give it your own number of sexy eye patches out of 10. It's all very exciting. You know what? It's a vibrant community of book lovers.

[Dominic]

Can get this newsletter with more of this amusing [e-mail] and it's completely free and it has loads of, you know, fantastic stuff. So do do it now. Tabby, what have we got to come? We've got a great variety of things to come, many of them inspired by listeners, actually.

[Tabby]

Exactly inspired by your requests. So, first of all, because the new Odyssey movie is coming out, we have got an Odyssey special and we're doing Circe by Madeline Miller, which digs into one part of his journey home. Then we have the 39 steps by John Buchan, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. So we're back in Italy. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. So many people requested that one. And Lord of the Flies by William Goulding.

[Dominic]

So loads of fun things to come. All right, I am off to the ball. Tabby is off to contemplate her own inevitable decay and mortality. And on that bombshell, we'll see you next time. Bye Bye.

[Tabby]

Bye.

[Katie K]

Hello and welcome to Doing It Anyway, a brand new series from Goal Hanger. I'm Katie K. I've spent years studying the science and art of of confidence, writing books about how we can close the confidence gap between men and women, and talking to experts and younger women about how to pass it on. Confidence means taking risks, acknowledging your fears, and, well, doing it anyway. In this series, I'll be talking to psychologists, entrepreneurs and business leaders to unpack how you can rethink challenges and grow your own confidence. We'll talk about how to spot the difference difference between confidence and competence. How to deal with office politics and stolen credit and yes, handling rejection and ultimately, how you can become a better leader, teammate, and yes, a better person. Doing It Anyway with Katty K. Every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.