Lampedusa y España

Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, a distant cousin of Lampedusa, had the great good fortune to attend the small reading workshop the writer conducted in the 1950s for a few promising young people in his circle. In time, the Prince asked Lanza—who had a Spanish mother and whom he would eventually adopt—to help him read the classics of Hispanic literature in the language of Cervantes. These pages, dictated by Lanza shortly before his death, offer not only an invaluable portrait of the life the Sicilian master led in Palermo but also a privileged account of the formative years of a young man who witnessed a fascinating journey: Lampedusa’s engagement with the Spanish language and literature.