MUMBAI: A prequel to Mario Puzo‘s Godfather, a novel written by Ed Falco, titled The Family Corleone is being readied and will be published in June 2012.

Based on an unproduced Puzo screenplay, The Family Corleone takes place before the Corleones‘ rise to power and tells the story of how young Vito Corleone fought his way through New York‘s criminal underworld to become the powerful Don introduced in The Godfather.

"Guided by Mario Puzo‘s own unproduced screenplay, Ed Falco thrillingly brings back Puzo‘s classic characters in a prequel that both honors the original, and stands on its own as a Godfather novel for a new generation of readers," Grand Central Publishing exec vice president Jamie Raab has reportedly said.

Puzo shared adapted screenplay Oscars with Francis Ford Coppola in 1972 and 1974 for their work on The Godfather and The Godfather Part II respectively.