Blood and Beauty: A Novel About the Borgias

Blood and Beauty: A Novel About the Borgias

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novelsâ€”The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Heartsâ€”has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. Now Sarah Dunant turns her discerning eye to one of the worldâ€™s most intriguing and infamous familiesâ€”the Borgiasâ€”in an engrossing work of literary fiction.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and familyâ€”in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucreziaâ€”in order to succeed.

Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatestâ€”though increasingly unstableâ€”weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelliâ€™s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.

Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood & Beauty is a majestic novel that breathes life into this astonishing family and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex and relentless.

Praise for Blood and Beauty

â€œDunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters, brimming with life and lust.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review

â€œLike Hilary Mantel with her Cromwell trilogy, [Sarah] Dunant has scaled new heights by refashioning mythic figures according to contemporary literary taste. This intellectually satisfying historical saga, which offers blood and beauty certainly, but brains too, is surely the best thing she has done to date.â€â€”The Miami Herald

â€œCompelling female players have been a characteristic of Dunantâ€™s earlier novels, and this new offering is no exception. . . . The members of this close-knit family emerge as dynamic characters, flawed but sympathetic, filled with fear and longing.â€â€”The Seattle Times

â€œThe Machiavellian atmosphereâ€”hedonism, lust, political intrigueâ€”is magnetic. . . . Readers wonâ€™t want the era of Borgia rule to end.â€â€”People (four stars)
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-07-16
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2013-07-16
Format	Kindle eBook