Still capturing the imagination after more than half a millennium, the Borgias have been the subject of several new books; easily the most appealing and addictive of these reads is Sarah Dunant's Blood and Beauty, a meticulously researched and beautifully written novel that not only re-creates the late 15th-century Vatican in exquisite detail, but explores the psychological and spiritual landscape of its inhabitants with extraordinary depth and subtlety.
The story begins in the summer of 1492 with the death of Pope Innocent VIII and the ascension of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, a Spanish "outsider" who has been plotting and biding his time for years. He promptly installed his offspring--Juan, Cesare, Lucrezia and Jofré--in the Vatican and moved in mistress #2, the exquisite Guilia Farnese. Borgia was unabashed in his adoration of his children, for whom he had great political aspirations. He made Juan the commander of the papal army, Cesare a cardinal (who, a fighter at heart, later became the first man to ever resign the position), and arranged a variety of strategic marriages for Lucrezia all in an attempt to bring the warring city-states of Italy under papal control.
The basic outlines of the story alone are enough for a captivating tale, but Dunant's ability to blend historical facts with their emotional and psychological underpinnings lifts Blood and Beauty to another level. Among details largely missing from other accounts of the Borgias, the most fascinating perhaps is the role that syphilis (a new and confounding scourge of the time) played in the lives of those afflicted with it, especially Cesare Borgia. The result is an engrossing and wildly entertaining novel that has the added (and rare) benefit of being very smart. --Debra Ginsberg