In the Hand of Dante: A Novel

A dark, hallucinatory literary thriller that intertwines a modern underworld quest for a lost manuscript of The Divine Comedy with the violent, obsessive inner life of Dante Alighieri himself.

Deep inside the Vatican library, a priest discovers the rarest and most valuable art object ever found: the manuscript of The Divine Comedy, written in Dante's own hand. Via Sicily, the manuscript makes its way from the priest to a mob boss in New York City, where a writer named Nick Tosches is called to authenticate the prize. 

For this writer, the temptation is too great: he steals the manuscript in a last-chance bid to have it all. Some will find it offensive; others will declare it transcendent; it is certain to be the most ragingly debated novel of the decade.