Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa ( ; December 23 , 1896 – July 23 , 1957 ) was an Italian writer . He is most famous for his only novel , " Il Gattopardo " ( first published posthumously in 1958 , translated as " The Leopard " ) , which is set in Sicily during the Risorgimento . A taciturn and solitary man , he passed a great deal of his time reading and meditating , and used to say of himself , " I was a boy who liked solitude , who preferred the company of things to that of people . " Biography . Youth . Tomasi was born in Palermo to Giulio Maria Tomasi , Prince of Lampedusa and Duke of Palma di Montechiaro , and Beatrice Mastrogiovanni Tasca di Cutò . He became an only child after the death ( from diphtheria ) of his sister . He was very close to his mother , a strong personality who influenced him a great deal , especially because his father was rather cold and detached . As a child he studied in their grand house in Palermo with a tutor ( including the subjects of literature and English ) , with his mother ( who taught him French ) , and with a grandmother who read him the novels of Emilio Salgari . In the little theater of the house in Santa Margherita di Belice , where he spent long vacations , he first saw a performance of " Hamlet " , performed by a company of travelling players . His cousin was Fulco di Verdura . World War I . Beginning in 1911 , he attended the " liceo classico " in Rome and later in Palermo . He moved definitively to Rome in 1915 and enrolled in the faculty of Jurisprudence . However , that year he was drafted into the army , fought in the lost battle of Caporetto , and was taken prisoner by the Austro - Hungarian Army . He was held in a POW camp in Hungary , but succeeded in escaping and returning to Italy . After being mustered out of the army as a Lieutenant , he returned to Sicily , alternately resting there and travelling with his mother , and continuing his studies of foreign literature . It was during this time that he first drafted in his mind the ideas for his future novel " The Leopard " . Originally his plan was to have the entire novel occur over the course of one day , similar to the famous modernist novel by James Joyce , " Ulysses " . Marriage . In Riga , Latvia , in 1932 , he married Alexandra Wolff von Stomersee , nicknamed " Licy " , a Baltic German noblewoman and a student of psychoanalysis . The marriage ceremony was celebrated in an Orthodox Church . They first lived with Tomasi ' s mother in Palermo , but soon the incompatibility between the two women drove Licy back to Latvia . In 1934 Tomasi di Lampedusa ' s father died , and he inherited his princely title . He was briefly called back to arms in 1940 , but , as owner of a hereditary agricultural estate , was soon sent back home to take care of its affairs . He and his mother ultimately took refuge in Capo d ' Orlando , where he was reunited with Licy . They survived the war , but their palace in Palermo did not . After his mother died in 1946 , Tomasi returned to live with his wife in Palermo . In 1953 he began to spend time with a group of young intellectuals , one of whom was Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi , a cousin , with whom he developed such a close relationship that , the following year , he legally adopted him . " The Leopard " . Tomasi di Lampedusa was often the guest of his cousin , the poet Lucio Piccolo , with whom he travelled in 1954 to San Pellegrino Terme to attend a literary awards ceremony , where he met , among others , Eugenio Montale and Maria Bellonci . It is said that it was upon returning from this trip that he commenced writing " Il Gattopardo " ( " The Leopard " ) , which was finished in 1956 . During his life , the novel was rejected by the two publishers to whom Tomasi submitted it . In 1957 Tomasi di Lampedusa was diagnosed with lung cancer ; he died on July 23 in Rome . Following a requiem in the " Basilica del Sacro Cuore di Gesù " in Rome , he was buried in the Capuchin cemetery of Palermo . His novel was published the year after his death ; Elena Croce had sent it to the writer Giorgio Bassani , who brought it to the attention of the Feltrinelli publishing house . " Il Gattopardo " was quickly recognized as a great work of Italian literature . In 1959 Tomasi di Lampedusa was posthumously awarded the prestigious Strega Prize for the novel . Works . " Il Gattopardo " follows the family of its title character , Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera , Prince of Salina , through the events of the Risorgimento . Perhaps the most memorable line in the book is spoken by Don Fabrizio ' s nephew , Tancredi , urging unsuccessfully that Don Fabrizio abandon his allegiance to the disintegrating Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and to ally himself with Giuseppe Garibaldi and the House of Savoy : " Unless we ourselves take a hand now , they ' ll foist a republic on us . If we want things to stay as they are , things will have to change . " The title is rendered in English as " The Leopard " , but the Italian word " gattopardo " refers to the American ocelot or to the African serval . " Il gattopardo " may be a reference to a wildcat that was hunted to extinction in Italy in the mid - 19th century – just as Don Fabrizio was dryly contemplating the indolence and decline of the Sicilian aristocracy . The novel was criticized at the time of its first publication by some literary critics for its straightforward " old fashioned " realism , a type of Stendhalian or Tolstoyan realism that particularly irritated neo - realists such as Elio Vittorini and Alberto Moravia . However , the novel was very popular among so - called common readers , as well as with prestigious foreign intellectuals such as Louis Aragon and E . M . Forster . In 1963 " Il Gattopardo " was made into a film , directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster , Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale , and which won the Palme d ' Or at the Cannes Film Festival . Tomasi also wrote some lesser - known works : " I racconti " ( " Stories " , first published 1961 ) , " Le lezioni su Stendhal " ( " Lessons on Stendhal " , privately published in 1959 , published in book form in 1977 ) , and " Invito alle lettere francesi del Cinquecento " ( " Introduction to sixteenth - century French literature " , first published 1970 ) . He also wrote " Joy and the Law " , a piece of literature frequently studied in high schools today . In 2010 , a collection of his letters were published in English as " Letters from London and Europe " . His perceptive commentaries on English and other foreign literatures make up a greater part of his works by volume than does his fiction . The main - belt asteroid 14846 Lampedusa is named after him .