'Every once in a while, like certain golden moments of happiness, infinitely memorable, one stumbles on a book or writer, and the impact is like an indelible mark. Lampedusa's The Leopard, his only novel, and a masterpiece, is such a work' - Independent

'Perhaps the greatest novel of the century' - L. P. Hartley

'The poetry of Lampedusa's novel flows into the Sicilian countryside... a work of great artistry' - Peter Ackroyd

'It possesses the descriptive and analytical power not simply of one of the most beguiling 20th-century novels but one of the modern world's definitive political fictions' - Guardian