The Santangelo novels are a series of novels written by Jackie Collins, which focus on the Santangelo family, particularly Gino Santangelo, an Italian-American former gangster, and his daughter Lucky. The novels, which take place from the 1920s to the present day, are set in the world of organised crime and include the Santangelos' rivalry with the Bonnatti and Kassari families. There are nine novels in the Santangelo saga and one spin-off. Confessions of a Wild Child (2013), is a prequel depicting Lucky's teenage years, which were briefly explored in the first Santangelo novel, Chances (1981).
A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.
The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,
Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.
The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."
In Roman law, a Novel (Lat. novella) is a new decree or edict, in other words a new law. The term was used from the fourth century AD onwards and was specifically used for laws issued after the publishing of the Codex Theodosianus in 438 and then for the Justiniac Novels, or Novellae Constitutiones. The term was used on and off in later Roman history until falling out of use during the late Byzantine period.
Anthony Burgess's book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice (Allison & Busby, 1984, ISBN 0-85031-585-9) covers a 44-year span between 1939 and 1983. Burgess was a prolific reader, in his early career reviewing more than 350 novels in just over two years for the Yorkshire Post. In the course of his career he wrote over thirty novels.
The list represents his personal choices.
In an interview with Don Swaim Burgess reveals that the book was originally commissioned by a Nigerian publishing company, and written in two weeks.