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, loose woman, 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.

Dario Fo, Nobel laureate and one of Italy’s most beloved writers, reveals Lucrezia’s humanity, her passion for life, her compassion for others, and her skill at navigating around her family’s evildoings. The Borgias are unrivalled for the range and magnitude of their political machinations and opportunism. Fo’s brilliance rests in his rendering their story as a shocking mirror image of the uses and abuses of power in our own time. Lucrezia herself becomes a model for how to survive and rise above those abuses.

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.

• Dec 22 2015
  Nota Benes
  — World Literature Today
• Sep 28 2015
  Barnes & Noble Review: "Fo’s high-spirited work, [is] a novel that comes close to a romp."
  — Barnes and Noble Review
• Aug 14 2015
  The New York Times: "THE POPE'S DAUGHTER ... stands as an evident tribute both to its much maligned heroine and to Franca Rame, in all her beauty and fiery dignity.”
  
• Aug 10 2015
  Mary Whipple Reviews: "Few readers will fail to see parallels between this political action and its on-going warfare, and similar behavior and political activity in the present day..."
  
• Aug 10 2015
  The Washington Post: "“The Pope’s Daughter” offers a studied reconsideration of Lucrezia’s life, swerving dramatically from accounts of her as “a monster, a poisoner, and a prostitute.”"