Il Gattopardo

The Leopard is the best novel by a Sicilian I have ever read . . . it is also the only novel by a Sicilian that I have ever read, I think-- which is shameful because my grandfather was from Sicily . . . anyway, it's never to late to start learning-- and this novel by Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa detail the social and political changes in Sicily during the Risorgimento, and Garabaldi's expedition to unify Sicily with the rest of Italy-- and it really gets into what living in a hot, desolate, drought-ridden, volcanic, craggy and isolated place like Sicily does to the character of one's citizens and it certainly makes me want to visit (but I know not to go in against any Sicilians, especially when death is on the line).