Lampedusa by local author Stephen Price is one of the six books nominated for the 2019 Giller Award. Based on real events, the story tells of Giuseppe Tomasi, the last Prince of Lampedusa who writes a novel called The Leopard while he is dying of emphysema. Price has written a slow, elegiac book with strong descriptive and emotional power. I read the book twice and found it had the feel of a cello solo, a melancholy and musical experience of language.
I'm now a member of two book clubs! We discussed this book in our Monday group, and everybody liked it, reflecting on which characters we most related to, and how much we enjoyed the language. It is a very slow book with multiple alternating time periods, and many characters, which may be a challenge for some readers, but it is worth the effort.
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