In The Name of the Family

Conjuring up the past in all its complexity, horror, and pleasures, In The Name of the Family confirms Sarah Dunant's place as the leading novelist of the Renaissance and one of the most acclaimed historical fiction writers of our age.

In The Name of the Family—as Blood and Beauty did before—holds up a mirror to a turbulent moment of history, sweeping aside the myths to bring alive the real Borgia family; complicated, brutal, passionate, and glorious. Here is a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's doomed years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolo Machiavelli.

It is 1502, and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womaniser and master of political corruption, is now on the Papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two, already thrice married and a pawn in her father's plans, is discovering her own power. And then there is Cesare Borgia: brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with the diplomat Machiavelli that offers a master class on the dark arts of power and politics. What Machiavelli learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince.

But while the pope rails against old age and his son's increasing maverick behaviour, it is Lucrezia who will become the Borgia survivor: taking on her enemies and creating her own place in history.