David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of The Leopard, one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader forever, The Leopard describes the golden era of nineteenth-century Sicily: its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory and its corruption, brutality, and inequality lurking beneath the surface. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? The answer is as unlikely as one might hope. A fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.