Promotional Information

From the creator of one of literature's most unforgettable families - the Corleones inThe Godfather - comes a mesmerizing novel about familial love and bloody loyalty

About the Author

Mario Puzo was born in New York. He is the author of the bestselling novel The Godfather and many other acclaimed novels. Puzo also wrote many screenplays, including those for the three Godfather movies, for which he won two academy awards. He died at his home in Long Island, New York, at the age of seventy-eight.

Reviews

Keeps readers turning pages all the way to an explosive showdown
*Daily Mail*

Headlong entertainment, bubbling over with corruption, betrayal, assassinations, Richter-scale romance, and, of course, family values
*Time*

Hugely effective fiction...[Puzo] keeps his pact with readers to unfailingly deliver the goods
*Literary Review*

Puzo is a master storyteller with an uncanny facility for details that force the reader to keep the pages turning. Call it a literary meat-hook
*USA Today*

Puzo’s genius was to create a world so thick with personality and behaviour . . . that reading his books becomes a seriously guilty pleasure
*New York Post*

Before his death in 2001, Puzo (The Last Don) had begun work on a novel featuring the 15th-century Borgias, whom he regarded as "the original crime family." There are obvious parallels between the Borgias and the Corleone clan immortalized in The Godfather, but the resemblances are mostly superficial, at least as they are presented in this limp historical romance. The story opens with Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia manipulating papal elections in 1492 to become the new Pope Alexander. Determined to establish a family dynasty, he appoints his son Cesare cardinal in his stead and, after a strategically engineered episode of incest between siblings Cesare and Lucrezia, begins ruthlessly eliminating rivals and marrying his children into alliances with the offspring of noble families of France and Spain. But Cesare would rather be a soldier, and Lucrezia would rather marry for love; these conflicted desires contribute as much as risky political power plays to undoing the Borgias in a single generation. Though Gino (Puzo's companion, author of Then an Angel Came) is credited for the posthumous completion, Puzo's true collaborator is history, and it proves a difficult partner. Obligated not to deviate from known facts, the narrative whizzes methodically through highlights of the Renaissance, embellishing events with snatches of imagined dialogue, purple prose ("For love can steal free will using no weapons but itself") and cameos by Machiavelli, Michelangelo and da Vinci. Overwhelmed by the vast pageant of events, the characters never achieve dramatic stature. Puzo's diehard fans will surely put the novel on their summer hit list, but they may feel, in Sonny Corleone's words, that "this isn't personal, it's business." Major ad/promo; simultaneous HarperAudio and Large Print edition.(Oct. 2) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Keeps readers turning pages all the way to an explosive showdown * Daily Mail *
Headlong entertainment, bubbling over with corruption, betrayal, assassinations, Richter-scale romance, and, of course, family values * Time *
Hugely effective fiction...[Puzo] keeps his pact with readers to unfailingly deliver the goods * Literary Review *
Puzo is a master storyteller with an uncanny facility for details that force the reader to keep the pages turning. Call it a literary meat-hook * USA Today *
Puzo's genius was to create a world so thick with personality and behaviour . . . that reading his books becomes a seriously guilty pleasure * New York Post *