Like Colm Tóibín's The Master or Michael Cunningham's
The Hours, a novel about art and writing in the life of one of the
greats
Set in a sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of
the late 1950s, Steven Price's Lampedusa explores the final years of
Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, as he struggles to
complete his only novel, The Leopard.
In 1955, Tomasi was diagnosed with advanced emphysema; shortly after, he
began work on a novel that would fail to be published before his death
four years later. When The Leopard at last appeared, it won Italy's
Strega Prize and became the greatest Italian novel of the century.
Adhering intensely to the facts of Tomasi's life but moving deep into
the mind of the author, Lampedusa inhabits the complicated interior of
a man facing down the end of his life and struggling to make something
of lasting worth while there is still time.