Abstract

Hill, John Sixty years ago, in 1958, a novel was published posthumously in Italy, 'Il Gattopardo', by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.It was a masterpiece that soon became a bestseller and the basis of Visconti's cinema classic. It recounts the impact on a Sicilian aristocratic family of Garibaldi's invasion in 1860, with Sicily's incorporation into the Kingdom of Sardinia and, subsequently, the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. In particular, it portrays the reaction to all this on the part of Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, as the state he knows - the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies - collapses around him, and a new state, run by 'new men', compels his adjustment to a new reality.