The Godfather is a book published in the year 1969 by Mario Puzo an italian-american writer which also made one of the biggest editorials of the country in the same year.
This is a 100 percent mafia book, we can say there has not been a better mafia book in history, many books may be similar or got similar ideas, but none of them made the impact that The Godfather made. Tough there are two movies based on this book which are classified as one of the greatest movies of all time.
There are a whole bunch of characters in this book due to it’s length. I am just going to name the most important ones like the whole Corleone’s family which is formed by Don Vito Corleone, Michael Corleone, Sonny Corleone. There is also some other mafia members and others like Tom Hagen, Sal Tessio, Virgil Sollozzo… All this characters have something in common and that is the corruption and mafia deals around them, they certainly represent the mafia in the USA in the 40’s and 50’s.
This book is very long, which makes it impossible to make a short plot summary due to the many ”parallel” stories inside the book, so i am just counting on the principal plot (the Corleone’s story). The story is in the middle 40’s and starts in the wedding’s party of Don Vito Corleone’s daughter Connie. All the family is in the celebration as well as the ”friends” of Don Vito. Don took some people into his office to accomplish some desires of the party’s people, because Scicilian men always accomplish the desires of their people in their daughter’s weeding. The Don listened to the people and met a mafia man called Sollozzo. The Don sent his loyal people to accomplish those desires, and he meets with Sollozzo, the man wanted to make a drug net with the power of the Corleone, but they didn’t agree, it was to risky for the Don. Sollozzo got angry because he felt was betrayed, and tried to kill Don Vito making a huge anger in Vito’s son Santino aka Sonny, this made a huge thing because it was the mafia war. Other son killed Sollozzo and his corrupted police officer that was helping him out against the Corleone. Sonny was still angry and killed other mafia members, he made everything harder and bigger in the war. Sonny was killed and The Don tried to fix the things, making a meeting in his home. Don Vito knew there was some inflitrated who was a traitor(Emilio Barzini) he said to his son Michael that he was the traitor and he should be prepare because they would love to arrange a meeting between them two, Michael listens to his father and when Don Vito died there was a funeral where some Sal proposed the meeting, Michael sent him to death. Michael decided to retire from the mafia life after being the most powerful Don and only one, he killed the other Dons in the mafias of New York while Cony’s son was in his baptism. Michael was already an Las Vegas business man because of his brother Fredo who was sent there after Sonny’s death, before many of this happenings so he decided to be just a casino man. Just as extra stuff: Michael was a soldier in the 2WW. He was protected by the mafia in Sicily. Something interesting is that at the beginning and one of the people who asked help from Don Vito was Frank Sinatra aka Jonny Fontane, it is said he had some stuff under the water going on with the mafia.
This book is basically omniscient narrator, and in this book we can find many words that made a huge impact like La Cosa Nostra. Some words are in italian of course, also there are quite epic quotes all around the book, in my opinion specially from Don Vito.
In my opinion this book is one of the best books ever, truly recommended for everyone, even if it is long and talks about mafia and quite old stuff, is interesting, exciting and very complete of course this is a real book and not overrated at all so it might be hard to get it at the beginning if you are totally new in the mafia stuff. A book that everyone should read.