Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather,’ what may now be considered classic literature on the Mafia, started a new genre in 1969. Its film adaptations also revolutionized the world of cinema with the Francis Ford Coppola trilogy. Puzo was undeniably the first who dared to venture into disclosing the dark world of the Mafia, beyond all the available pulp fiction on the underworld.

Mario Puzo died in July 1999, thirty years after launching ‘The Godfather’ that has sold 21 million copies. Puzo was the son of a Neapolitan immigrant. He grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. He had always denied any relationship with members of the Cosa Nostra.

Some say that Puzo only wrote about a world he knew best. Though that may be the case, it was still great insight from a writer to know the Cosa Nostra up close. ‘The Godfather’ trilogy departed from the usual take on the Mafia as just a nefarious criminal syndicate with almost a franchise on organized crime. Mario Puzo showed the personal, psychological, societal, economic and political factors that were instrumental in the rise of organized crime in America.

‘The Godfather’ is a sociological treatise, at the very least. It is also one of the most effective political statements to date.