' We are a family,' Alexander told his children. The Borgias face immense opposition from all quarters of Italy, but their deadliest foes may be far closer to home.Ī tale of brutality and betrayal that crowns Mario Puzo's remarkable career Scheming and plotting for their own ends are his children: Giovanni, the much-favoured golden boy his younger brother Cesare, jealous and vicious and Lucrezia, cunning, calculating and passionate. Headed by Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI, this tight-knit family is fighting to keep its iron grip on Italy - but theirs is a lethal game, and the cost of failure is surely death. But where there is gold - and power - there are those who are willing to do anything to get their hands on them.Įnter the Borgias. The Renaissance is in full swing, heralding a new golden age for Europe. And their time, place, and characters are recaptured in all their earthy, human grandeur, with the unerring insight and compassion that were Mario Puzo's great gifts.Ī labor of love two decades in the making, The Family marks the final triumph of one of the greatest storytellers of our time.From the legendary author of THE GODFATHER comes a novel of the original Italian crime familyįifteenth-century Italy.

Their intermingled stories constitute a symphony of human emotion and behavior, from pride to romance to jealousy to betrayal and murderous rage.

Surrounding him are his extraordinary children: the simple, unloved Jofre the irascible, heartless Juan the beautiful, strong-willed Lucrezia and the passionate warrior Cesare, Machiavelli's friend and inspiration. At the story's center is Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, a man whose lustful appetites for power, luxury, and women were matched only by his consuming love of family. In The Family, this singular novelist transports his readers back to fifteenth-century Rome and reveals the extravagance and intrigue of the Vatican as surely as he once revealed the secrets of the Mafia.

Now, thirty years later, Puzo enriches us all with his ultimate vision of the subject, in a masterpiece that crowns his remarkable career: the story of the greatest crime family in Italian history - the Borgias. What is a family? Mario Puzo first answered that question, unforgettably, in his landmark bestseller The Godfather with the creation of the Corleones he forever redefined the concept of blood loyalty.

The family puzo novel