SOURCE: "Mario Puzo: The Don of Bestsellers Returns," in Publishers Weekly, July 29, 1996, pp. 64-5.

In the following interview, Puzo comments on The Godfather, his literary success, and The Last Don.

Mario Puzo makes us an offer we don't want to refuse. After nearly two decades of public silence, he agrees to grant PW his first interview in 18 years (though a later one, described as "exclusive," appeared last week in New York magazine), in order to talk about his masterful new novel, The Last Don, due out from Random House in August, and about the arc of his writing career. So on an early summer day, we travel out to Long Island under a hot milky sky to sit with him in the second-floor sunroom of his home. Also present is his editor, Jonathan Karp.

"Why did you decide to speak with us?" we ask Puzo after he sets...