In the second half of the 19th century, Italy was changing: Unification was underway, and Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Redshirt army was on the verge of conquering the island of Sicily. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s posthumously published 1958 novel Il Gattopardo (in English, The Leopard) chronicled that period through the eyes of the Sicilian aristocratic Corbera family, in an enduring epic that became the highest-selling novel in Italian history. Now, years after Luchino Visconti’s Palme d’Or–winning film adaptation, the story comes to life once again, in a new limited series about to stream on Netflix.

Tom Shankland, who directed several episodes of The Leopard, was raised steeped in the history of Sicily; his father was a professor in Europe, and the family spent a great deal of time there. “I read the book in my 20s and thought, ‘it’s a wonderful book,’ ” Shankland tells Tudum. “It seems to speak to the Sicily that I experienced as a child, through the prism of this family.”

As an adult, Shankland married a woman from Sicily, and soon returned to The Leopard. “There was something about revisiting it which was massively thrilling,” he says. “I’m a bit older now than I was when I first read it. And I think there’s so much about that book that’s about change and experiencing personal change as well as social and political change.”

Photos by LUCIA IUORIO/NETFLIX