Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi recently released his new novel Navola, one of the best novels of the year, which has been described as living at the intersection of The Godfather and A Game of Thrones.
Recently, Paolo joined me on my podcast Bookin' to talk about Navola.
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Jason: Paolo, thank you so much for joining me. I am a huge fan of The Water Knife and The Windup Girl, and I'm so glad that you joined me to talk about Navola.
First, before we dive into your new book, how have things been going for you in Colorado? I know you just came back from a book tour.
Paolo: It's good. I split my time between 6,000 feet and 9,000 feet, and you definitely appreciate that the nights get cool.
But yeah, I've been out on book tour, and it's been about two and a half weeks out on tour, and I just got back yesterday. It was great to be out, and it's really great to be home. I got to see my wife and kid for the first time in a while, and yeah, it's just, it's good to be back. But yeah, Colorado's good.
I got to see my wife and kid for the first time in a while, and we aren't on fire right now, so it's especially good.
Jason: This book is great, Paolo. Could you take a moment to set this novel up for our readers?
Paolo: Sure. So this is a story of a kid growing up in a very powerful merchant banking family. This story takes place in a world that's sort of similar to Renaissance Italy.
The city of Navola is a place of great artistic works and a lot of beauty, but also a lot of intrigues. And this young boy, he's growing up, and his father is the most wealthy and powerful merchant banker. Their family, the De Reguli family runs Banca Reguli.
Banca Reguli are the lenders of choice if you're planning on invading another country; that's who you go to to get money, to raise soldiers and do your invasion. They're that wealthy. They're more wealthy than many nations.
And not only do they control and influence a lot of trade, they are also huge influencers of politics. They control the politics of the city of Navola and they influence much of the politics of the city-states and other surrounding kingdoms. So the responsibilities that young Davico has as he's coming up in the world and as he's expected to assume power and take his father's place eventually are huge.
And Davico isn't necessarily well suited for the role that he's supposed to take on. He's a kinder, gentler soul than his father is. And so that's a weakness.
Jason: As I wrote earlier, this novel has been described as the intersection of The Godfather and A Game of Thrones, which leads me to ask Paolo, this family, the di Regulai family, why are they so feared and respected, beyond just the fact that they run a bank and they have a lot of money? Is this a royal family? Is it a mafia family? What are we dealing with here?
Paolo: They exist in a space where wealth is power, but also they exert a great deal of influence over other people. So they've collected promises. Davico's father, Devonaci di Regulai, he says that he deals in goods, but more in promises, and he never fails to collect.
And he's a man who has made many, many alliances, friendships, gained many people's either trust or obedience. And so he works through them. He controls the leader of Navola via promises and sort of back room deals.
But he's dangerous. He's incredibly dangerous. He employs an assassin named Cazzetta who will go out and kill somebody if they displease him.
And Cazzetta is famous and Navola is being sort of such a terrible assassin that mothers will frighten their children with his name when they're being bad. They'll be like, Oh, Cazzetta will come for you.
But that's part of it. It's partly that he has an almost supernatural understanding of people and of strategy. So he's always one step ahead.
Their family has grown in power over generations. There have been three generations of Banco Regulai, where the bank got stronger and stronger, more and more powerful and gained more and more influence. And not just monetary influence, but political influence through the collecting of promises and obedience.
But they prefer to work from behind the scenes. And at this point in the story, Devonaci, the father of the family and leader of the bank, he also has this dragon eye that he's purchased. And it's this extraordinary artifact from a lost age.
And this eye is this fossilized memory of power and this creature that was far beyond human power. So he's got this eye that sits on his desk and he makes people make oaths on it when they come in. And he does his deals with them when he sits across the plank, when he sits across from them, he makes them swear upon a dragon eye.
And with the implication that if they're lying, that the dragon will know that they're liars and that will put them in terrible danger. So there is this man who grants a great number of favors who expects obedience in return. That would be sort of a Godfather echo.
But then the amount of scheming that happens in the story and the number of different players who all have their own agendas inside the city of Navola and outside in the surrounding city-states and kingdoms, it's a complex web of schemes and plots. And that's more Game of Thrones or more similar to that sort of feeling.
To hear more from this interview, check out episode 301 of Bookin' here, or anywhere else that you listen to podcasts.