A fictional reworking of the story of Don Giovanni, the legendary seducer – seen through the eyes of his servant Leporello.

“The work of a master of his art… Palmer tells the story from Leporello’s birth to Don Giovanni’s death, subtly leading the reader from the picaresque to the philosophical as the Don’s dissipation takes its toll on both his body and soul. Leporello is an extraordinarily skilful novel.”
Piers Paul Read, Catholic Herald

“The aged Leporello… recounts his own history, as if to a listening audience of one who occasionally informs him of Mozart’s transformation of the story. But he is not simply his master’s voice, and Don Giovanni does not even appear until about a quarter of the way through. Before that, we are treated to Leporello’s low-life childhood and adolescence in fine picaresque style. Furthermore, it is only in the novel’s long middle section that the Don is himself, the insatiable champion in the lists of love of Leporello’s Catalogue Aria, aided and abetted by his ever-faithful servant.

The later part of the book is again unexpected. The Don evades the theatrical flames of hell, as well as those of a real volcanic eruption, to all but settle for a quiet life and a wife before disaster and physical decay, more ghastly than anything the Commendatore had to offer, finally catch up with him.

For Palmer, Don Giovanni’s world is an uneasy alliance of bestial, superstitious groundlings and enlightenment savants, both of which he describes with impressive panache. By the end, when the Don has returned home to die, we realise that for all his callousness and brutality, we like Leporello have grown to love him. When disease begins to ravage him both in mind and in body, we can hardly fail to wonder whether its assaults may not have some relevance to our own age and its ills.”
David Ekserdjian, The Times