The Family

The Family is a 2001 novel by Mario Puzo.

The novel is about Pope Alexander VI and his family. Puzo spent over twenty years working on the book off and on, while he wrote others. It was finished by his longtime girlfriend, Carol Gino. Effectively his last novel.

The book has a factual core, with fictional events used to create the unknown aspects of Pope Alexander VI, formerly Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, and his family's life. The book is peopled by real characters, including Niccolò Machiavelli, and the real relationships with members of the Borgia family. However, it tends to focus on the incestuous relationship between Lucrezia Borgia and her brother, which historically have never been proven.

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