Italian · 1896–1957
The last Prince of Lampedusa spent most of his life reading. He kept rooms in Palermo, lectured a small circle of young men on Stendhal and English literature, and published nothing until he was nearly sixty. Then, in the last two years of his life, he wrote a novel about his great-grandfather, the astronomer prince who watched Garibaldi's landing dissolve the Sicily he was born into. Two publishers turned it down. Tomasi died of lung cancer in July 1957 without knowing that Giorgio Bassani would find the manuscript, that Feltrinelli would print it, that it would sell more copies than any Italian novel of the century and win the Strega Prize a year after his death. He also left a handful of stories, including 'The Professor and the Siren,' and lecture notes on Stendhal. One book made him permanent.