The Professor and the Siren

By: Stephen Twilley and Marina Warner and Giuseppe Tomasi Lampedusa

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Synopsis: An NYRB Classics OriginalIn the last two years of his life, the Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote not only the internationally celebrated novel The Leopard but also three shorter pieces of fiction, brought together here in a new translation."The Professor and the Siren," like The Leopard, meditates on the past and the passage of time, and also on the relationship between erotic love and learning. Professor La Ciura is one of the world's most distinguished Hellenists; his knowledge, however, came at the cost of a loss that has haunted him for his entire life. This Lampedusa's final masterpiece, is accompanied here by the parable "Joy and the Law" and "The Blind Kittens," a story originally conceived as the first chapter of a followup to The Leopard.gence of a new agrarian ruling class in Sicily, coarser than its predecessor but equally blind to the inexorable march of change. This elegant new translation of Lampedusa's complete short fiction, the first by a single hand, updates and corrects previously available English versions.