The Leopard – Giuseppe di Lampedusa

A magnificent Italian novel from the 1950s about a formidable Sicilian aristocrat, the "Leopard" of the title, in the 1880s trying to keep his traditional life alive amid great political upheaval.

Despite the barrier of translation, the writing is lush and the sustained imagery is, at times, breathtaking. There is some wonderful stuff about astronomy, the regularity and eternity of the stars contrasted with the tumult of the human world.

The use of flash forwards strangely reminded me of Sparks' "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and the effect is brilliant, as here:

“From the ceiling the gods, reclining on gilded houses, gazed down smiling and inexorable as a summer sky. They thought themselves eternal; but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn., was to prove the contrary in 1943.”

Incidentally, this has now provided me with the definitive example of a great novel that becomes a great movie.