The Godfather: The Lost Years

Apr 25, 2025 3:26 PM

Author:Mark Winegardner

Brought to you by Penguin.

'The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete,' begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, 'until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States.'

The Godfather: The Lost Years takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the story of that 'year of delicate political manoeuvring' - and how, in winning the battle of that year, Michael Corleone set the stage to lose the war: the war to make the Family legitimate, the war to keep the Corleones supremely in power, the war to stay true to his father's wishes, the war to give not just his Family but his family a safe and happy life.

The Godfather: The Lost Years is not just a sequel. A magnificent novel in its own right, by an acclaimed young American novelist, it traces the nexus of ambitious, audacious decisions that Michael Corleone implements, their ultimate failure, and, after the Family's literal and figurative years in the wilderness (of Las Vegas), Michael's literal, physical return to New York, and his attempts to regain control there.

Reviews

He (Winegardner) has done an excellent job and, though he is standing on the shoulders of a giant, The Lost Years is in some respects an improvement on its model

—— The Telegraph

The Godfather Returns is not only a real book by a real writer. It's also a real pleasure, a fine, swirling epic - bitter, touching, funny and true ... Winegardner has not squandered his inheritance

—— New York Times Book Review

The measure of his success is quickly apparent ... he brilliantly recreates the vivid, pungent prose style of Puzo's original

—— Daily Express

Moves at a cracking pace with plenty of atmosphere and sympathy

—— Daily Telegraph

Fleming finds an unencumbered, historically penetrating language in which the simplest expository sentences can bring prose, story and setting into a crisp and evocative alignment

—— Sam Thompson , Guardian

This is a tense, thrilling and at times darkly comic novel with a complex central character who... bursts off the page

—— Time Out

An extremely wintry and hard hitting adventure story...this is a historical evocation at times as powerful as the account of pre-1914 Berlin that the late great Sybille Bedford gave us in A Legacy..... readers will surely welcome its author to the ranks of our greatest storytellers

—— Literary Review

Virile, ruthless, adventurous

—— Independent

'...a convincing, accurate thriller...this book is worth reading if only for the passage where the hero, Skelly, glimpses Osama Bin Laden at a public hanging; the scene both convinces and frightens'

—— The Economist

Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It's what fires off the movie projector in the reader's mind.

—— MICHAEL CONNELLY

Patterson knows where our deepest fears are buried... there's no stopping his imagination.

—— NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Patterson is in a class by himself.

—— VANITY FAIR

[Patterson's] books don't pussyfoot around when it comes to the villains. These are bad, bad people ... with a lot of intrigue in high places.

—— AL ROKER, The Today Show

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