Publisher's Synopsis
Although best known as author of a singular masterpiece,The Leopard,the Prince of Lampedusa left a rich and varied oeuvre that repays a careful reading. The best and most representative of it is collected in this volume.
Places of My Infancy, a childhood memory of the Lampedusa palace in Palermo at the turn of the century, and of the great family mansion inland at Santa Margherita, provides a fascinating background to the princely setting ofThe Leopard.The text hitherto published had been edited and pruned by the author's original text - with many characters and incidents earlier suppressed - has been fully restored. The story ofThe Professor and the Siren,a delicious example of Lampedusa's fantasy, andThe Blind Kittens( the first chapter of an unfinished novel of bourgeois Sicily that would have formed a pendant toThe Leopard) both featured as appendices to Harvill's earlier edition of the great novel. They are included here together with a charming, comic, bitter-sweet story,Joy and the Law.
