This image is the cover for the book Pope's Daughter

Pope's Daughter

“Lucrezia Borgia as a living, feeling woman rather than just another bodice waiting to be ripped . . . an evident tribute . . . to its much maligned heroine.” —New York Times

Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most vilified figures in modern history. The daughter of a notorious pope, she was twice betrothed before the age of eleven and thrice married—one husband was forced to declare himself impotent and thereby unfit and another was murdered by Lucrezia’s own brother, Cesare Borgia. She is cast in the role of murderess, temptress, incestuous lover, femme fatale par excellence.

But there is always more than one version of a story.

Lucrezia Borgia is the only woman in history to serve as the head of the Catholic Church. She successfully administered several of the Renaissance Italy’s most thriving cities, founded one of the world’s first credit unions, and was a generous patron of the arts. She was mother to a prince and to a cardinal. She was a devoted wife to the Prince of Ferrara, and the lover of the poet Pietro Bembo. She was a child of the renaissance and in many ways the world’s first modern woman.

From Dario Fo, Nobel Laureate and one of Italy’s most beloved writers.

“Lucrezia Borgia enthralls Fo, and he signals his enthusiasm with arch, knowing humor directed at the reader . . . Fo’s Lucrezia more femme fatale than incestuous poisoner.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Dario Fo takes the image that has been sent down to us all the way from John Ford’s Tis a Pity She’s a Whore through Victor Hugo’s play Lucrezia Borgia to a slew of the recent popular biographies and turns it inside out.” —La Repubblica

Dario Fo

Born near Lago Maggiore in Italy in 1926, Dario Fo is an actor, playwright, comedian, director, songwriter and political campaigner. His first one-act play was produced in 1958 and since then he has written, directed and acted in over forty plays and theatrical productions. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the words of the Nobel Prize committee: “He if anyone merits the epithet of jester in the true meaning of that word. With a blend of laughter and gravity he opens our eyes to abuses and injustices in society and also the wider historical perspective in which they can be placed.” The Pope’s Daughter is his first novel.



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