In the Name of the Family (Dunant)

In the Name of the Family 
Sarah Dunant, 2017
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996975


Summary
 Before the Corleones, before the Lannisters, there were the Borgias. One of history’s notorious families comes to life in a captivating novel from the author of The Birth of Venus.

Bestselling novelist Sarah Dunant has long been drawn to the high drama of Renaissance Italy: power, passion, beauty, brutality, and the ties of blood.

With In the Name of the Family, she offers a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia’s final years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolò Machiavelli.

It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two—already three times married and a pawn in her father’s plans—is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in 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 increasingly erratic behavior, it is Lucrezia who must navigate the treacherous court of Urbino, her new home, and another challenging marriage to create her own place in history.

Sarah Dunant again employs her remarkable gifts as a storyteller to bring to life the passionate men and women of the Borgia family, as well as the ever-compelling figure of Machiavelli, through whom the reader will experience one of the most fascinating—and doomed—dynasties of all time. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 8, 1950
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Cambridge University
• Awards—Silver Dagger Award for Crime Fiction
• Currently—lives in London, England

Sarah Dunant is a writer, broadcaster and critic. She was a founding vice patron of the Orange Prize for women's fiction, sits on the editorial board of the Royal Academy magazine, and reviews for the Times, Guardian, and Independent on Sunday. She teaches creative writing at The Faber Academy in London and biennially at Washington University in St. Louis in its Renaissance studies course. She is also a creative writing fellow at Oxford Brookes University. She has two daughters and lives in London and Florence.

Early career
Dunant was born in London. She attended Godolphin and Latymer School and studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was heavily involved in theatre and the Footlights review. After a brief spell working for the BBC she spent much of her twenties traveling (Japan, India, Asia and Central and South America) before starting to write. Her first two novels, along with a BBC television series, were written with a friend. After this she went solo.

Since then she has written ten novels, three screenplays and edited two books of essays. She has worked in television and radio as a producer and presenter: most notably for BBC Television where for seven years (1989–1996) she presented the live nightly culture programme The Late Show. After that she presented the BBC Radio 3 radio programme Night Waves.

Books
Dunant's work ranges over a number of genres and eras. Her narratives are hard to categorise due to their inventive treatment of time and space, and a favoured device of hers is to run two or more plot strands concurrently, as she does in Mapping the Edge. A common concern running through her work is women's perceptions and points of view, with other themes included.

Her first eight novels were broadly written within a thriller form. Their setting was contemporary and allowed her to explore such themes such as the drug trade, surrogacy, terrorism, animals rights, cosmetic surgery and sexual violence.

Then in 2000 an extended visit to Florence rekindled her first love: History. The novels which followed—The Birth of Venus (2003), In the Company of the Courtesan (2006), and Sacred Hearts (2009) were extensively researched historical explorations of what it was like to be a woman within the Italian Renaissance. The trilogy looked at marriage, the culture of courtesans and the life of cloistered nuns. They were all international best sellers and were translated into over 30 languages.

Her 2013 novel Blood & Beauty centers on a depiction of Italy's Borgia dynasty. It sets out to offer a historically accurate vision of a family who have been much maligned by history. Dunant states in her afterword that she plans to write a second, concluding novel, about the family. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/22/2013.)

Book Reviews
Beyond the attraction of the characters and the history, [Sarah] Dunant has a great immersive style. Her hallmark is the penetrating detail.… In the end, what’s a historical novelist’s obligation to the dead? Accuracy? Empathy? Justice? Or is it only to make them live again? Dunant pays these debts with a passion that makes me want to go straight out and read all her other books.
Diana Gabaldon -  Washington Post


Dunant has a storyteller’s instincts for thrilling detail and the broad sweep of history. This, and her glorious prose, make Dunant’s version irresistible.
Times (UK)


Reading In the Name of the Family, I began to smell the scent of oranges and wood smoke on the Ferrara breeze. Such Renaissance-rich details fill out the humanity of the Borgias, rendering them into the kind of relatable figures whom we would hope to discover behind the cold brilliance of The Prince.
NPR


Renaissance doyenne Dunant turns her sights once again on the Borgia family [with] Pope Alexander VI.… Dunant is at her best focusing on the three Borgias, especially the conflicts between Cesare and his father as both gain in power and stature, and most particularly on the life of Lucrezia.
Publishers Weekly


Full to the brim with vivid historical details both gory and beautiful, Dunant's … [s]killfully drawn characters and an excellent sense of place will entice readers of historicals. —Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. at Brockport Lib., SUNY
Library Journal


With a vibrant cast of characters both iconic, including the vastly influential Niccolo Machiavelli, and rarely highlighted, Dunant’s captivating Renaissance Italian saga will thrill her fans and bring more into the fold.
Booklist


Another sojourn with the infamous Borgias.… In Dunant's hands, she is a whole person, and that alone might keep readers captivated. Flawed but not without interest—sort of like the Borgias themselves.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Borgias have had a rough ride in history and popular culture—though even when one tells the truth about them, they are hardly angels. How did knowing and understanding more of the society they came from affect your views about them? When it comes to the men, is it possible to can you admire someone you don’t like? Or like someone you can’t admire?

2. There would have been no Borgia history to write if it hadn’t been for Rodrigo himself. This extraordinary political player (the author Sarah Dunant herself has said he has "the mind of Putin and the body of Pavarotti") is seen here moving into old age, which can bring with it a certain vulnerability and nostalgia. How did that affect your impression and feelings about Rodrigo?

3. The Oedipal relationship between father and son can be powerful in all families—but here it is also shown to affect history. As the tension grows between Cesare and Rodrigo, do you side with either or both? How is their conflict mirrored by that Alfonso and his father Ercole d’Este?

4. Being a woman in renaissance Italy was not easy. Equally, it is not always easy for modern women to understand renaissance women, their limitations and their power, to see the world through their eyes. How does this book help you to do that, be it Lucrezia, Guilia Farnese or Isabella d’Este?

5. In particular what do you make of Lucrezia’s journey, how she copes with her setbacks, plays the cards she has been dealt, such as:

• Her marriage to Alfonso?
• The leaving of her son?
• The relationship with her father-in-law?
• Her "affair" with Pietro Bembo? (Some claim their relationship was consummated. Having studied the available evidence—and his history and personality—the author decided it was not. What do you think?)

6. When it comes to Cesare Borgia, all evidence points to a man who was bi-polar, added to which we know he suffered from syphilis (in those days, called the pox). Do you think his character was driven by illness? Or does it simply complement an already powerful personality? Do you share Machiavelli’s fascination with him?

7. Machiavelli himself has not had a much easier time in history than the Borgias. His analysis of power is often described as immoral and—well, Machiavellian. Having spent time in his company and the world that produced him, what did you make of him?

8. Machiavelli’s wife is almost unknown to history. There is just one letter remaining from her, quoted in the epilogue and mentioned in a few other chapters, which  results in her character being the most "invented" in the book. What was your impression of her character? Does the author succeed in bringing this relatively unknown historical figure to life?

9. The Italian renaissance produced some of the greatest works of art the world has ever seen, many of them paid for by the institution of the church—which was, at the time, appallingly corrupt. How do you feel about the Sistine chapel or the new St. Peter’s Basilica being paid for by selling pardons or indulgences? What is the true price of priceless art?

10. Everything you have read in this novel is based on historical truth—though there are imagined conversations and inner feelings, all the events, even down to the reports of Machiavelli and many of the quoted letters, are historically accurate. As a reader of historical fiction, how much does it matter to you that what you read is accurate? Do writers have a duty to the past to make it "truthful" as well as entertaining?

11. Novels set in history are always at some level speaking to us about the present as well as the past. Did reading In the Name of the Family bring to mind any parallels about/to the world around you now?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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