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The Melancholia of a Departing Age
May. 1st, 2012 10:18 pmOct 2011
The Leopard - Tomasi Di Lampedusa - Vintage Classics, 2007
* * * *
This is a one-book wonder. It was written in the 1950s by the last in a line of minor Italian princes and was never published during his lifetime. It is set chiefly during the Risorgimento and the main character is a thinly fictionalised portrait of the author’s great grandfather, but it is actually about the fading into irrelevance of people, ideas and social institutions with the passage of time. It is one long dying fall. It is, in short, the ultimate fin de siècle novel.
( Read more... )
The Leopard - Tomasi Di Lampedusa - Vintage Classics, 2007
* * * *
This is a one-book wonder. It was written in the 1950s by the last in a line of minor Italian princes and was never published during his lifetime. It is set chiefly during the Risorgimento and the main character is a thinly fictionalised portrait of the author’s great grandfather, but it is actually about the fading into irrelevance of people, ideas and social institutions with the passage of time. It is one long dying fall. It is, in short, the ultimate fin de siècle novel.
( Read more... )