Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

The novel is a chronicle of fifty years of the Risorgimento, the Italian Unification's effect on Sicily, dating from Garibaldi's landing on the island in 1860 to the final decline of a once-opulent Sicilian family. The book represents a variation on the historical novel, in that it permits the present to intrude into the past--the omniscient narrator hints at what will happen after the story is finished. The protagonist is Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince...