The Fight for Freedom: Palermo, 1860

Folio Society, London, 1968. Book condition: good. Spine a litle faded, very slight shelf wear around the edges and some light soiling. Internally very clean. Binding totally sound. Original slipcase in very good condition. In the early hours of May 6th 1860 Garibaldi and just over a thousand meb sailed from Genoa in two stolen steamers to conquer the island of Sicily, at that time part of the Kingdom of Naples. Giuseppe de Lampedusa made use of this book as source material for his remarkable novel The Leopard. In this book, Brancaccio has caught the atmosphere, the feverish excitement and the idealism of those days with an absolute focus. They are so much more real than in the novel not only because this is a work based on experience rather than imagination, but because they are viewed through the eyes of a Tancredi.