Interesting nominations so far! I am pleased that they met my intention to highlight a variety of awards and countries.
My first nomination is
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It was the winner of the 1959 Strega Prize (Premio Strega), which is Italy's most prestigious literary award. The history of the prize is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strega_Prize
From Goodreads:
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The Leopard is a story of a decadent and dying aristocracy threatened by the forces of revolution and democracy. Set against the political upheavals of Italy in the 1860s, it focuses on Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince of immense sensual appetites, wealth, and great personal magnetism. Around this powerful figure swirls a glittering array of characters: a Bourbon king, liberals and pseudo liberals, peasants and millionaires.
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From Amazon because I like this quote by E.M. Forster:
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The Leopard is set in Sicily in 1860, as Italian unification is coming violently into being, but it transcends the historical-novel classification. E.M. Forster called it, instead, "a novel which happens to take place in history." Lampedusa's Sicily is a land where each social gesture is freighted with nuance, threat, and nostalgia, and his skeptical protagonist, Don Fabrizio, is uniquely placed to witness all and alter absolutely nothing. Like his creator, the prince is an aristocrat and an astronomer, a man "watching the ruin of his own class and his own inheritance without ever making, still less wanting to make, any move toward saving it." Far better to take refuge in the night skies.
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