[2] Lampedusa, who conceived the story while staying with his cousins Casimiro and Lucio Piccolo di Calanovella, penned the work during the winter of 1956-1957.
The novella is a result of the brief and late creative period of the author who, in a very short span (1956-1957), wrote a small number of stories and works of various kinds, including essays and the novel Il Gattopardo.
[3][4] The narrative begins in 1938 in Turin and misty winter, where the encounter between two personalities different from each other, both Sicilians: the distinguished classicist Rosario La Ciura, an eminent retired professor of Ancient Greek and member of the Italian Senate, and the young Paolo Corbera di Salina, a Sicilian of noble birth who works as a journalist and chases skirts.
The result is a mutual interest and a familiar partnership that leads gradually to open up the professor confidently to that young man and tell him of an episode far, during the preparation for the competition for the chair of greek at the University of Pavia.
In those days, the risk of mad crazy after months of study, he was invited by a friend to move to a deserted huts on the coast of Sicily, at Augusta, where the magical encounter with the mermaid Lighea, the daughter of Calliope, the muse of epic poetry.