The Dante Club

Dante’s Manuscript turns a writer into a target of the Vatican and the mafia—where any approach to the truth means the risk of never coming back.

In the novel “Dante’s Codex,” against the backdrop of today’s New York and 14th-century Italy, two parallel storylines intertwine, united by the mysterious legacy of Dante Alighieri.

An American author studying the biography and works of Dante unexpectedly gets his hands on an authentic manuscript of the “Divine Comedy,” hidden in the closed collections of the Vatican’s Apostolic Library. A hunt begins for the relic: both scholars of Dante and those who are used to solving problems by force want to obtain it, because the manuscript may hold the key to an entire chain of secrets. In trying to understand what exactly he has been given, the writer launches his own investigation—and the closer he gets to the answer, the more real the threat looming over him becomes, as the line between the past and the present gradually fades…