Cassie McCullough

And when we learn that something is a lie or there has been this lying, kind of ironically, we then see the truth about the person once that has been revealed and the person we thought they were disappears completely.

So it's just so complicated.

Yes.

But with Victoria, when Victoria is given a piece of truth, she uses it like a weapon, like a sort of, you know, shard of broken glass.

Oh, my goodness.

Amazing.

This is my favourite book in a long time.

She reminded me, I had in my mind Picasso's Weeping Woman, you know, that sort of very bold face all broken up by the sort of beginning of cubism and just this sort of monstrous face that's also fantastically beautiful, sort of frightening and grotesque, but, ah, electric.

And Lampedusa's novel is based on the life and experiences of his own grandfather.

So he traced the history of his aristocratic family to write this book.

It's set in Sicily in the 1860s in a time of upheaval when Italian unification happened.

So it's a time of immense political and social change.

And it's the period when a modern Italian identity is being formed.

Well, listeners have been commenting on the ABC Facebook group too.

Anna Rella Formosa says, The Leopard is a masterpiece.

It represents a moment of great change, the old and the new, in a very complex time in Italian history.

It's simply sublime.

Okay, so you've mentioned Don Fabrizio.

It's his story.

He's a prince, a large man, very commanding with a history of being in charge, but things are going to change perhaps.