In 1957, Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, the last member of a great Sicilian family, died childless, impoverished and unknown, leaving behind him the recently completed manuscript of a novel. The following year the novel, The Leopard, was published to great acclaim. For a quarter of a century Italian and foreign scholars were denied access to the reclusive writer's papers until, following a meeting with Lampedusa's adopted son, David Gilmour succeeded in gaining permission to work in the writer's last home in Sicily. There, and in the nearby ruin of the Palazzo Lampedusa, he found many letters, diaries, notebooks and photographs which had not seen the light of day since Lampedusa's death.