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Deep in the lowest reaches of the Vatican library, a secret chamber is opened for the first time in centuries. Inside it is an object of inestimable value: the manuscript of The Divine Comedy, written in Dante's own hand.
The priest who finds this treasure spirits it away to his home in Sicily, where it comes into the grasp of more worldly parties. And so in New York a few weeks later, a sometimes writer, sometime thief named Nick Tosches gets a phone call from a friend. There's an item he wants him to look at, a manuscript that needs authentication. Tosches recognizes the pages for what they are - and embarks on the most harrowing adventure of his life.
As this story unfolds, so too does a parallel tale: the odyssey, seven hundred years ago, of Dante himself, a man trying to weave out of the grossness of his own humanity a poem that contains the sum of the world's wisdom and the very breath of the divine. It is a struggle every bit as deadly as, centuries later, that between the individuals fighting to possess his manuscript.
