The Leopard

Even through the most active scenes, David Horovitch always projects a hint of the elegiac tone that suffuses this novel. Published in 1958, di Lampedusa's story recounts the changes in Sicilian culture that took place during the violent Italian unification of the mid-1800s. Listeners, many of whom might know nothing of mid-eighteenth-century Sicily, will feel the strains of change--the one constant aspect of history. Most of the book is told the from point of view of Fabrizio, a nobleman, and Horovitch's voice makes him gruff and cultured, noble with an edge of barbarism. We feel the prince's conflict between his love of his own past and his appreciation for the possibilities of the newly unified Italy. D.M.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine