Sangue e onore. I Borgia (Blood & Beauty)

Who would be a historical novelist of calibre and ambition, while the great glittering caravan of Hilary Mantel's Tudor trilogy is still passing? Sarah Dunant's Blood and Beauty, the fourth of her Italian historical novels and the initial instalment in what is planned to be a two-part saga, is her first since Mantel's colossal success. By taking on the brutal and notorious Borgia dynasty, which 50 years after Henry VIII's death had Italy by the scruff of the neck, Dunant might be seen to be putting her subject in the ring with Cromwell – but it should be said straight away that this is a different sort of book. Neither oblique nor experimental, it has a great deal more in common with Maurice Druon's brilliantly gripping series from the 1950s, The Accursed Kings (about to be reissued with the tagline The Original Game of Thrones), than with Mantel, and is hugely enjoyable for it.

Dunant raises the curtain on Rodrigo Borgia's election as Pope Alexander VI in 1492: through the Borgias' trademark guile, charm and cruelty he has claimed for himself the most powerful position on earth. He also openly maintains a household of four illegitimate children by Vannozza dei Catanei – among them the infamous Lucrezia, still a child but already being haggled over by rival dynasties – and a new and beautiful mistress. This is the Italy of Michelangelo and Pinturicchio: in Ferrara Bembo is writing sonnets and in Milan Leonardo is modelling his doomed sculpture of Francesco Sforza. But it is also the turbulent land of Savonarola and Machiavelli; the incubator of syphilis and the birthplace of the siege engine, an agglomeration of rival dukedoms, principalities and republics that encompasses some of the most viciously disputed territory in man's history.

In the 10 years covered by Blood and Beauty, Borgia Rome has to negotiate with the armies of the French king Charles VIII, and the great ruling families of divided Italy – "a sack of spatting cats that has learned nothing from the past" – through diplomacy and marriage, poison and charm. At the same time, Alexander has to manage his own unruly household: treacherous servants, a dangerously passionate daughter, and wilful, warring sons, trained from birth to fight their way to power.

From the outset Dunant takes possession of her sprawling, unwieldy material. She sets up a resonant dynamic between the political – the dangerous machinations of the papal conclave - and the domestic. In the new Pope's overflowing illegitimate household in Santa Maria del Portico, his young mistress washes her long golden hair and his ripening daughter dreams of romance as the Borgia machine barters her virginity away.

Among a broad cast of characters, delineated with a satisfyingly firm hand, are the great paterfamilias Alexander, Falstaffian, uxorious, charming and ruthless; the sinister master of ceremonies, Johannes Burchardt; and the handsome, vicious Cesare, who matures marvellously from a rake decked out in the latest fashions to a savage melancholic, mired in violence and dressed in black. And while Dunant's reclamation of the infamous Lucrezia from incestuous whore to maternal romantic whose fertility is used by powerful men as a bargaining tool robs her somewhat of her imaginative power, it is almost certainly closer to the truth.

If the careful path, too, that Dunant treads between intelligent historical analysis and shameless romp very occasionally veers into Carry On Lucrezia territory (Naples is described as "a place of heat and moist passageways"), on balance this only adds to the gaiety of the enterprise. But it is in her asides that Dunant finally triumphs, like all good novelists: in a deft, shrewd, precise use of killer detail. When she casually mentions the Baglioni family, "one half of whom massacred the other in their beds, under cover of a wedding reception", the ambassadors to the Vatican gossiping like village women, or the sheer labour of counting out the 100,000 ducats' dowry for Lucrezia's third marriage while the bride maintains her fixed smile under the painted ceilings of the Vatican palace, it is difficult not to look forward to the next ride on an old-fashioned rollercoaster of a story.

Where are you now and what can you see?

I have come out of a Capuchin monastery in Palermo and the sunlight is blinding after the semi-darkness of the catacombs.

What are you currently reading?

For fun I am re-reading Lampedusa's 'The Leopard', possibly the best historical novel ever written; while for work, Machiavelli's 'The Prince'.

Choose a favourite author, and say why you admire her/him

I have recently gone back to Emile Zola. The range of his work is astonishing, but he is particularly brilliant on the havoc wreaked by sexual passion.

Describe the room where you usually write

The walls are deep blue and there is a desk near the window.

Which fictional character most resembles you?

If 'Broadcast News' had been a book before it was a movie I would have been the news producer played by Holly Hunter. Vibrat-ing with energy and commitment, she is rather too intense for her own good.

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

I suspect, like many people, I have been thinking about the impact that Nelson Mandela has made and how much a light will go out in the world when he dies.

Che te ne pare?

Da come parla di Rodrigo pare competente -e dice che lo ammira più di quanto non faccia con Cesare (brillance sociopatico XD) e Lucrezia, che comunque stima. Non so, il fatto è che dalle interviste tutti sembrano competenti; poi apri i libri...........................

Non so, il fatto è che dalle interviste tutti sembrano competenti; poi apri i libri...........