David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life
story of the creator of The Leopard, one of the great novels of the
twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader
forever, The Leopard describes the golden era of nineteenth-century
Sicily: its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory and its corruption,
brutality, and inequality lurking beneath the surface. Who wrote this
masterpiece, this work of art? The answer is as unlikely as one might
hope. A fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.