Read more
What is a family?
Mario Puzo first answered that question in his landmark bestseller The Godfather, with the creation of the Corleones. Now, thirty years later, Puzo enriches us all with his ultimate vision of the subject: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history -- the Borgias.
In
The Family, this singular novelist transports his readers back to fifteenth-century Rome, and reveals to us the extravagance and intrigue of the Vatican as surely as he once revealed the secrets of the Mafia. At the story’s center is Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, a man whose lustful appetites were matched only by his consuming love of family. Surrounding him are his extraordinary children: simple, unloved Jofre; irascible, heartless Juan; beautiful, strong-willed Lucrezia; and passionate warrior Cesare, Machiavelli’s friend and inspiration. Their stories constitute a symphony of human emotion and behavior, from pride to romance to jealousy to betrayal and murderous rage.
A labor of love two decades in the making,
The Family marks the final triumph of one of the greatest storytellers of our time.
About the author
Mario Puzo was the author of the international bestseller The Godfather and cowrote the screenplays for the Academy Award-winning trio of films based on the book. Puzo's other books include The Last Don and Omerta, both New York Times bestsellers.
Besides The Valachi Papers, (hailed by Rudolph Giuliani as "the most important book ever written about the Mafia in America") Peter Maas is the prize-winning author of ten other books of fiction and nonfiction, including Serpico, Manhunt, In a Child's Name, China White, and Killer Spy. Philip Bosco won the Best Actor Tony Award for his role in Lend Me a Tenor. He has received several other Tony nominations and has appeared in numerous feature films.
Summary
“Dazzling, passionate, a masterwork that ranks with Puzo’s best.”
—Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguys
“One of his most satisfying works….A thoroughly entertaining posthumous present from one of the masters of popular fiction.”
—Booklist
Mario Puzo’s final masterwork. A sweeping epic saga of corruption, greed, treachery, and sin, The Family is the ultimate crowning achievement of the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist who gave the world The Godfather, arguably the greatest Mafia crime novel ever written. In The Family, Puzo—whom the Washington Post calls, “A serious American talent”—plunges reader into the colorful tumult of the Italian Renaissance, immersing them in the roiling intrigues and deadly affairs of the remarkable family whose name has always been synonymous with power, corruption, poison, and murder: the infamous Borgias.
