The Godfather

The Godfather is a crime novel by the American writer Mario Puzo, first published in 1969. Set primarily in New York City beginning in the 1940s, it follows the Corleone family, one of the city's five dominant Mafia organizations, headed by the aging patriarch Vito Corleone, whose refusal to enter the narcotics trade provokes an assassination attempt and ignites open war with the rival Five Families. As Vito recovers, his youngest son Michael, a decorated war veteran who had deliberately kept his distance from the family business, is drawn in after killing a rival mob boss and a corrupt police captain to avenge the attack on his father, and is forced into hiding in Sicily; on his return he gradually assumes control of the family, consolidating its power through a campaign of calculated violence that ends with the murders of the heads of the other Five Families, even as he tries to move the Corleones toward legitimate business. Drawing on Puzo's own research into organized crime for a story he had never lived firsthand, the novel became one of the best-selling works of American fiction of the twentieth century, remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for years and establishing the modern popular image of the Italian-American Mafia don, before its own 1972 film adaptation, co-written by Puzo, brought the story to an even wider audience.