The Making of a Saint

Italy, 1484. The Renaissance burns bright with art and blood. Filippo Brandolini returns to Forli after years abroad to find his world unrecognizable: the old nobility fading, the ruthless Count Girolamo Riario grasping power, and every courtly smile hiding a blade. Through the memoir of Fra Giuliano, a Franciscan monk wrestling with his own soul, Maugham traces Filippo's descent through a world of political assassination, dangerous flirtations, and impossible moral choices. The title is an ironic question: what does it mean to make a saint in a land where faith is merely another weapon? Written when Maugham was twenty-four, this is his only historical novel - a bold, unsentimental portrait of Renaissance Italy stripped of its fresco-glory, revealing the murders and machinations beneath. For readers who want their historical fiction sharp as a stiletto and twice as deadly.