The novel was met by criticism from people of different political views. The novelist Elio Vittorini, who had rejected an earlier draft of the book for his own press, the author Alberto Moravia, and the poet Franco Fortini, among others, condemned the book as "right-wing". Moravia wrote that it expressed ruling-class "ideas and view of life." The equally leftist Louis Aragon vehemently disagreed, seeing it as a "merciless" criticism of that class;[18] many among the surviving Sicilian nobility certainly saw it as such, and were scandalized that one of their own could write such a thing.[19]
The book embodies multiple opinions. The Savoyard Piedmontese are presented as naive about Southern Italy, full of plans that will never match the reality of the region,[20] while the book's main representative of the old Bourbon regime, Don Fabrizio's brother-in-law Màlvica, is a fool.[21] In his biography of Tomasi, David Gilmour sees Tomasi as criticising the Risorgimento (Unification of Italy) "from both sides, from the viewpoints of both Gramsci ...," describing the failure of the revolutionaries to truly ally with the peasants, "... and the Bourbons," describing a unified Italy's substitution of even worse elements into the island's elite.[22] Despite or because of this controversy, The Leopard ultimately gained great critical acclaim. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize.[1]
