In the Hand of Dante. [first edition]

Deep inside the Vatican, a priest discovers the rarest and most valuable art object ever found: the manuscript of The Divine Comedy, written in Dante's own hand. When a writer named Nick Tosches is called to authenticate it, the temptation proves too great: he steals the manuscript in a last-chance bid to have it all. As this dark and twisted journey unfolds, so does a parallel tale: the odyssey of Dante himself, a man trying to weave a poem that contains the sum of the world's wisdom and the very breath of the divine. An astounding masterwork of audacity and beauty.