Book Bearings
Cover of The Godfather by Mario Puzo

The Godfather

Mario Puzo

  • 450 pages · about 8 hours
  • First published 1969
  • 109 editions
Buy on Bookshop.orgView on Open Library

Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.

1 About this book

The Godfather is a crime novel by American author Mario Puzo. Originally published in 1969 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, the novel details the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Beach, New York), headed by Vito Corleone.

Puzo's dedication for The Godfather is "For Anthony Cleri". The novel's epigraph is by the French author Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." The novel covers the years 1945 to 1955 and includes the back story of Vito Corleone from early childhood to adulthood.

Good for readers who want: a mystery, a love story, and a long read.

  • Mystery
  • Organized crime
  • Romance
  • Crime
  • Criminals
  • Mafia
  • Drama
  • Americans in fiction

2 About Mario Puzo

1920–1999

Mario Francis Puzo (; Italian:; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for its sequel Part II in 1974.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

3 Similar books

Find a book that fits your moment