The book "Grandfather's Daughter" by Dario Fo

In the fragmented Italy of the late 15th century, after the death of Pope Innocent VIII, the last and perhaps most prominent representative of the famous Borgia family of Spanish origin, Rodrigo Borgia, also known as Pope Alexander VI, ascends to the throne of the papacy. In a tense historical and political situation, Borgia seeks to establish stable relations with the empires that threaten its sovereignty and to maintain its supremacy over the princely powers of the Apennine Peninsula at all costs. In 2014 In his only published novel about the Borgias, Dario Fo, remaining faithful to the historical sources, reproduces the history of the famous dynasty, focusing on the numerous court intrigues and love affairs associated with the personality of Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander. However, the author, abandoning the image of the cruel and ruthless daughter of the pope depicted in the chronicles of the period and in the famous literary works written later, presents the reader with a new Lucrezia, not one who weaves these intrigues, but one who falls victim to the political interests of her father and brother and resists these intrigues. In this novel, written largely in a satirical spirit, which may remind us of the Italian novels and comedies of the Renaissance, the author assigns episodic roles to such famous figures from the era of Humanism as Nicolaus Copernicus, Ludovico Ariosto, Andrea Mantegna, Pietro Bembo and others.