Renaissance Italy, the Medicis, the Borgias, Rome, Florence, Venice. Juliette Benzoni takes us into this world where intrigue, crimes, poison, assassinations, love, art, and politics intertwine.
The era of Machiavelli, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cesare Borgia and his sister Lucrezia. A novel, a page of history, a saga, a thriller? A bit of everything at once. Venice, Florence, Genoa, are all rivals. Italy does not exist, it is divided into many city-states, all enemies of each other. To this, you must add France, which covets Milan, and Spain, represented by the Borgias. Moreover, all these princes are ambitious and unscrupulous.
Even the pope assassinates or rather, has people assassinated. Cesare Borgia kills his own brother. For the love of a woman, one sells one’s soul. Thus, it is a succession of hatred, crimes, and interests throughout this historical novel.
If the Renaissance brought beauty, art, and aesthetics to France, it was at the cost of many intrigues and adventures where Italy, although the source of this awakening of the arts, was also a land where human life held little value in the face of the thirst for power.
Thierry Jan, writer
