The Leopard

The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo, lit. 'The Serval' [il ˌɡattoˈpardo]) is a novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, The Guardian named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels" and in 2026, The Guardian named it as 46th in "the best 100 novels of all time". The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon. Lampedusa was the last generation of an old princely family of Sicily. He had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on his great-grandfather, Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, another Prince of Lampedusa.