Blood & Beauty

The Borgias; A Novel

De: Sarah Dunant

Narrado por: Edoardo Ballerini

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

The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels—The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, and Sacred Hearts—has an exceptional talent for breathing life into history. Now Sarah Dunant turns her discerning eye to one of the world’s most intriguing and infamous families—the Borgias—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 family—in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia—in order to succeed.

Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’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 & Beauty

“The Machiavellian atmosphere—hedonism, lust, political intrigue—is magnetic. . . . Readers won’t want the era of Borgia rule to end.”
—People (four stars)

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

“Like 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.”
—The Miami Herald

“Compelling female players have been a characteristic of Dunant’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.”
—The Seattle Times

“Dazzling . . . a triumph on an epic scale . . . filled with rich detail and page-turning drama.”
—BookPage

The Borgias are Brought to Life

In history, people can seem larger than life and also 2 dimensional. The author did an excellent job helping us understand this family and the good, bad, and atrocious parts of them.

The best

I loved every minute of this story at times finding it impossible to stop listening. I couldn’t believe how quickly it was over. I will be looking for the continued story hopefully by the same author and reader they are both the best. The description and detail are perfect I could see it all like I was there. A great book and performance.

Superb!

What made the experience of listening to Blood & Beauty the most enjoyable?

The writing is exquisite - mellifluous and poetic. Her psychological take on the situations and characters are interesting and plausible.

What did you like best about this story?

The character development, the plot and Dunant's skill in keeping me fully engrossed.

What about Edoardo Ballerini’s performance did you like?

His performance was impeccable and added tremendously to the richness of the story and my immersion into the characters.

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed this book so much that I am unable to read another historical fiction novel (my favorite genre) at this time. Blood and Beauty is so well crafted that it will be a tough act to follow.

Hatt

Ohhh, the Borgias! An interview i heard with Dunavant persuaded my buy. Ballerini is fabulous!

Good story but could have been so much better

I love Sarah Dunant but I felt very detached from this story despite the subject matter that I loved due to the way she wrote it in third person narration. It keeps it too unemotional and detached and even more so with the narrator who was very blah and read each sentence like a newspaper reporter almost. I kept listening due to interest in the subject and will listen to the follow up novel for the same reason but compared to Dunant’s others works which are wonderfully engrossing I feel like she missed the mark in trying a different style of writing with this one.