In the Hand of Dante

by Nick Tosches

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.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction

377 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Nick Tosches was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."

Reviews

[Shainna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Update 2025: This bullshit is being turned into a movie??? I mean...I guess they can only improve it? Remove the narration and maybe it'll be ok?

Do you like to be insulted and offended?

Do you enjoy plots that go nowhere?

Do you love to read long rants of self-indulgent whining and hypocrisy?

Do you prefer characters who grow slower than a shark fetus develops into a shark? (The shortest known gestation rate for a shark is 4-5 months for a bonnethead shark, the longest gestation rate is probably that of the Frilled Shark at 3-4 years, just so you have some perspective.)

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, congratulations, THIS is the book FOR YOU!


You've heard of angry sex? I have angry reads. If a book makes me mad, I will finish it - I won't enjoy it and I will ask myself throughout the read, "Why am I not stopping?" And when an author writes himself into the book as a character of one of these hate reads, as Mr. Tosches has done here, I find the fine line of "do I hate the character or do I hate the author or both?" How much of Mr. Tosches is actually this character? I don't know, I don't care, I just know his ego is probably way bigger than it deserves to be.

Sure, he's excellent at writing different styles. He presents different perspectives in entirely different formats.

But they all sound the same.

His character development went nowhere and in the case of his "Nick" character, it sometimes contradicted itself and left me confused. Early on, it sounded as though his diabetes left him impotent, but the next chapter he was having sex without a problem and the rest of the book talked a lot about his sexual successes and desires. Perhaps I misunderstood, perhaps it was for a different character - I'm not sure, but the biggest issue is: I don't care.

And that sums up the attitude of the characters to the plot: they don't care about it.

And why should they? The author doesn't. He spends most of the beginning on a self indulgent whine of life, death, how much apathy he has for people in general (including the reader) and skims the actual plot. The complaint about the publishing industry? Around 25 pages. The trip to Italy and back, with forged IDs and murders? Five pages.

The great mystery of who wrote the rest of the Divine Comedy? I didn't realize that was even a plot point until he went off on a few pages of "I KNOW WHO WROTE IT." Congrats? I didn't realize we were supposed to wonder about it? "It's so-and-so!" Oh. Great. Never touched upon again.

The writing is full of purple prose and sentences that take up half a page, only to be followed by extremely short, supposedly poignant sentence fragments.

This book was like a bag of potato chips filled mostly with air and the chips were stale and flavorless, but all the professional reviews made me think I was going to get a 4 course dinner cooked by one of the best chefs in all the world.

I'd suggest skipping this book. Or, if you really want to read it, start around page 135, where the useless backstory/ranting ends.

[Suzanne Stroh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to put this book down after five pages of first-person narration by a violent, misogynistic misanthrope. But I couldn't. I was outraged, I was offended, and I was...still reading...and paying full attention.

In the tradition of Dante and de Sade, this novel about obsession and lust is engrossing, haunting, and I found it sucking me in almost against my will. A tour de force about corruption on a vast scale that makes The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco seem sophomoric.

The darkness and violence in this book would be intolerable except for the sheer talent, the unquestionable authority of the artist in complete control of his medium, with big ideas that demand attention.

To sound the depths of male human depravity, pair this with a similarly controversial book written in a completely different style, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Both are masterpieces of their respective genres. This just happens to be a lesser-known one.

To compare this book with a similar novel that employs more restraint (and, I believe, better taste) but addresses similar existential and historical questions with equal intelligence, try Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was my birthday in 2002. I had rec'd a gift card to a local indie bookseller ( we miss you Hawley-Cooke) and I happily went to buy this. They were sold out. I bought instead Prague by Arthur Phillips which was quite the rave at the time and had the added interest of my impending trip to Eastern Europe. A friend of mine was cheating on his wife at the time. he went to another local and bought me a copy. He was a good friend. Was he buying my silence about his activities? I first read Prague and then (20 days?) later experienced a twist in its plot with my own soon-to-be wife in Budapest. Hours after finishing Phillips' Prague, I devoured In The Hand of Dante. Everything both stolid and electric about both Tosches and Dante remains present and pulsating throughout the entire novel, an agreeable amalgamation of literary homage and sinister thriller.

[Phil James · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm going to give up on this one. Life's too short to listen to all this foul-mouthed egotistical babble.
I get the point, the author inhabits the caricature of himself to play with your mind and undermine the foundations of "literature" and the publishing industry, but I just got bored.

[Fabio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Qualsiasi romanzo in cui si parli di manoscritti mutilati/maltrattati/mutilati, a meno di non essere un capolavoro, rischia di essere una lettura assai penosa. Almeno per me. E quello di Tosches non è un capolavoro.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

This book originally came to my attention after reading the 2000 nonfiction piece The Last Opium Den, in which edgy novelist Nick Tosches was sent by Vanity Fair magazine to rural Asia on the eve of the millennium, to find out if any honest-to-God opium dens still actually exist anywhere in the world (in short: not really); that got me interested in actually reading one of Tosches' edgy novels, for example this one, which supposedly centers around the discovery of the original manuscript for Dante's The Divine Comedy in the basement of the Vatican library, which is then stolen and ends up in the hands of a circle of low-end drug dealers and thugs in New York. Yeah, sounds pretty interesting, right? But the truth is that I barely made it through the first 50 pages of In the Hand of Dante before giving up; and that's because Tosches' writing style is surprisingly immature and cliched, given his long and well-respected career, something that sounds more like a teenaged suburbanite trying to appear tough and edgy, instead of a middle-aged grizzled underground veteran who actually is tough and edgy (as Tosches actually is -- seriously, check out his bio sometime, it's fascinating). A real disappointment, given how good The Last Opium Den was, and the high esteem he enjoys among a certain crowd of edgy literature lovers.

[Seth]

Okay, time for a revised, and reevaluated review: In the Hand of Dante is a wildly inconsistent novel. It shifts so radically in prose that it sometimes makes you wonder if it was written by one person, or by several. I undersand that this was intended, there were two story lines weaving in and out of the story, but I felt as I read that the execution had been faulted.
It felt like two separate novels had been glued together in such a way that it grinded against its plot, and took you from the story. I noticed that in some sections it comes to its form, and beings to flow like it had been written by the distinguished and reveled author that it was, and then suddenly it clumps together, and becomes this uneven , shitty pretentious thesis of an egotistical grad student. By the midway point of this book, I had began to wonder which part I hated more, the fact that some part were so good that they forced you to shift through the worthless chapters, or that those worthless chapters could last 50-60 pages.
It was about this time that i decided to cease my efforts, and put the book down. Even still, I found it extremely irritating that I still wanted to LOVE this book, so much that I knew I would keep coming back, as if there is a supernatural pint of gravity locked on to me. Perhaps one of these time I'll pick it up and discover that I suddenly understand it. I just hope that there is something within worth understanding.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I knew more Latin, Greek, Hebrew. Wish that Tosches could find a synonym for "fuck."
Wish that the novel moved more...sequentially?
Interweaving the story of Dante/Via Nuova/The Divine Comedy with semi-autobiographical Nick Tosches (thief and murderer and misanthrope and yearner for things good and bad) is amazing though.
Obvious that Tosches is well-schooled in all things medieval.
But somehow this novel falls short of great.
Tosches' ego intrudes.
The novel resonates with Cormac McCarthy and Umberto Ecco.
It's pornographic, celestial, well-researched (?), engrossing at times and sometimes just plain foolish and contrived.
Loved the character of the old Jew who holds the secret to trinities abounding.
And liked the "stuff" about publishing, corruption in various industries, and Dante's supposed search for the evanescent, inexplicable God beyond words. Wind and water, sky and stars.
Much to ponder; much to dislike; much to...too much.

[Nadia Batista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Já há muito tempo que esperava ler A Mão de Dante, pois a sua sinopse prometia. Apesar de nunca ter lido A Divina Comédia (algo que espero um dia fazer), Dante enquanto pessoa sempre me intrigou, e ler um livro sobre ele, com uma história que aparentava ser tão interessante, foi uma oportunidade que não podia desperdiçar. Estava também curiosa em conhecer Nick Tosches, devido ao final da sinopse: "Alguns leitores poderão considerar este livro ofensivo. Outros considerá-lo-ão transcendente." Quem seria este escritor? Que tipo de leitora seria eu?

Uau. O primeiro capítulo é, sem dúvida, violento, e sim, pode-se dizer ofensivo. E aí descobri que, sinceramente, não queria saber. Escrita muito boa e história muito boa; eu pura e simplesmente não quis saber se durante a narrativa havia demasiados palavrões ou demasiadas cenas violentas. Habitualmente nem gosto de ler textos com palavrões, mas n'A Mão de Dante eles são necessários. Esta linha de violência e crueza mantém-se na história actual, onde existe uma grande sensação de se estar perante gangsters atrás do manuscrito de Dante. Mesmo assim, há lugar para a reflexão, no meio de tanta aspereza há algo mais leve: a consciência de um dos personagens, que o acompanha até ao final. Há dois personagens muito fortes, Louie e Nick: são ambos asquerosos na sua maneira de ser, mas senti-me curiosa em saber o próximo passo de cada um. Nick, no entanto, é diferente e acaba por se revelar uma verdadeira surpresa. É capaz de coisas terríveis, mas à medida que a sua história se vai revelando, dei por mim a ser mais compreensiva com ele. No entanto, são sem dúvidas personagens difíceis de gostar. São fascinantes, de uma maneira algo mórbida, mas complexas.
Já o lado da história de Dante, bem mais místico e com outro tom, não me agradou tanto. Esperava algo que me maravilhasse, e apesar de ser bom, não me arrebatou como eu esperava. Conhecemos pouco de Dante e muito de esoterismos. Mas é uma questão de gosto, apenas. Está tremendamente bem escrito, e apresenta-nos pontos de vistas bem interessantes. Gostei especialmente da história de Gemma. Apesar de ser tão pouco relevante, gostaria de ter visto a sua relação com Dante mais trabalhada e desenvolvida; mas compreendo que isso pouco interesse para a história em si. Há momentos também em que a narrativa chega a ser confusa, o que me obrigou a ler com mais atenção e raciocínio. Demonstra, no entanto, o largo conhecimento do autor sobre o assunto.
Durante a história de Dante, apercebi-me da versatilidade do autor, Nick Tosches. Pareciam duas histórias que se complementavam mas escritas por pessoas diferentes. Tudo muda, e, no entanto, tudo se liga. E tudo pelas mesmas mãos.

Existem espécies animais que, sabemos, matam os da sua própria espécie por comida ou território. Porém, foi a patologia da religião que tornou o homem a mais antinatural, a mais iníqua e a mais autoflageladora das espécies.

Uma dúvida manteve-se comigo até hoje. Nick Tosches, escritor e personagem. Até que ponto é o Nick-personagem baseado no Nick-escritor? Haverá alguma auto-biografia presente nas palavras? É por estes e por outros motivos que não gosto quando os autores dão os seus nomes às personagens dos seus livros. Estará Nick Tosches a contar-nos um pouco da sua vida? Estará a projectar um desejo obscuro do que ele gostava de ser, ou fazer, ou viver?

A Mão de Dante é um bom livro. Foge um pouco aos clichés a que estamos habituados, e mesmo o final é bastante mais interessante do que tudo ficou bem. As reviravoltas da história actual são completamente inesperadas e entusiasmantes. A história de Dante tem de ser lida com calma e atenção, pois já é um pouco mais complicada, mas mesmo assim agradável.
Aconselho este livro a toda a gente. Não posso compará-lo a nenhum autor nem cingi-lo a um único género. É um bom livro, e quem puder, deve dar-lhe uma oportunidade e começar a ler. Quanto mais não seja, tem uma grande história!

http://eu-e-o-bam.blogspot.pt/2013/11...

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick Tosches is the darkness and the light shining forth from the darkness. It’s as if he is the embodiment of Jung’s statement, “We do not become enlightened by imagining beings of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” "In The Hand of Dante" is a unique thing of beauty. It is a work of art unto itself that nothing being written today can touch. The vulgar edges of the text itself are beauty.

Tosches is a literate writer which will make him challenging for the average general reader. But, this novel is worth the trouble. Be prepared. You will need to read this book at least twice. Once to see what happens and the second time to slowly savor each luscious word, for Nick Tosches is both poet and master prose stylist. He takes you up through the celestial spheres to brush, ever so slightly, the face of God and then dashes your broken, twisted corpse among the gutters were every type of despicable lowlife walks by urinating upon your lifeless body, flicking the butts of their spent cigarettes at you in a parody of the most vile sex acts.

This is story of appetites and veniality; a story of the inexplicable desire to gaze upon the face of the ineffable even if it costs you your sanity and your life. It is a mad weaving of tales. The first is the discovery by an aged priest of the only manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy written in his own hand. It is a cruel trick of history that no known samples of Dante’s handwriting remain. Yet the discovery is compelling and it attracts the attention of the worst sort of thug seeking to profit and the author himself, who cleverly inserts himself in the narrative as a principal degenerate character, seeking an odd kind of redemption, although he might scoff at hearing such an interpretation.

Then there is the odyssey of the poet Dante as he struggles to complete the last part of his Divine Comedy – Paradiso. The author’s excellent Medieval scholarship helps him give voice to the tortured Dante as he struggles “to know” and comes to terms with the principal fact that all who seek absolute truth learns – lie and be condemned to hell; tell the truth and be crucified for it. It is these moments where the writing gets a little unruly.

The author himself senses that he is showboating a little and reveling arrogantly in his talent. He derisively calls it “fatuous writerly nonsense.” Yet this novel would be as nothing without it. Sometimes you feel bogged down in Dante’s emotions and the words stream on endlessly, it seems, to the point where you want to toss it across the room in disgust. Then you calmly walk over, pick it up and resume reading vowing to skip or skim quickly over Dante’s tale.

In the end because you sense that you are a little too illiterate to make such value judgments and because you can’t quite shake the feeling that if you do skim it you will miss your moment of clarity you read. You feel that your life depends on some hidden something hiding in the text waiting to pounce on you – reveal to you – something undefined – ineffable. It is God, the devil, our innermost selves all dancing below the surface of the text, as one, mocking us as we continue to read.

I am still breathless after reading this book – I don’t care how clichéd that sounds. I have dug through my bookshelves and the boxes of books hidden in the back of my closet finding my own copy of the Divine Comedy – sadly in English – that I have owned for years and yet never read. As I begin my journey through the dark forest with Dante and the poet Virgil I am upset that my lack of literacy keeps me imprisoned in my native tongue of English. I am sure to miss the true beauty. Perhaps, it isn’t coincidental that I finished In The Hand of Dante at the end of the year. My new years resolution should well be to learn Italian and Latin.

[Lia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is more of a compilation of fantasies and speculations than it is plot-driven; oddly enough, I did not find this off-putting in the least. After braving the peculiar first line, I found myself sucked into Tosches's brilliant prose, his wit, his honesty, and his couldn't-care-less attitude to the opinions of the entire world. Since reading this book, I've read his short book of poems ("Chaldee," which is utterly fascinating in its enigmatic, but egotistical and infuriating, mix of French and English) and "Under Tiberius," which is full of fewer tangents that Dante but three times the blasphemy. I will continue to reach for every Nick Tosches book I see on the shelf.

If you pick up this book, be warned that Tosches will run sprints over your opinions and sense of propriety and spit on their remains.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating work on the lives of Dante Aligiheri and Nick Tosches. Nick takes on a subject like Dean Martin, or the Vatican Bank, Sonny Liston or Paradise Lost and makes it his own. His books are intricately detailed, incredibly well-written, and alternately mind-expanding and mind-blowing. I think this is my favorite of all of his works I have read, because anyone serious about literature comes to the Aligiheri well sooner or later, wishing to channel that elusive afflatus that drives the lover of words forward into creation,

[JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece.

[Alejandra Aravena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una historia que no deja mucho. El autor te pasea por varios personajes, entre ellos Dante Alighieri, haciendo saltos que muchas veces pierden al lector en tiempo y espacio. Largo y un poco tedioso. Por momentos muy lento y técnico en lo que respecta al conocimiento de la cabala.

[Anya Wassenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that makes literary critics swoon (my edition begins with three pages of quotes from swooning critics!) but most of the time, judging from many of the critiques here including my own, just doesn't connect with its readers. Like many of the previous reviewers, I was tempted to give up half way through, but was reluctant to pass judgment without reading the whole thing.

Yes, he's a great writer in the sense that he can deftly manipulate the English language, it's just that... much of it was tedious, flipping back and forth between endless racist/misogynistic rants by the bad guys in the present day and endless pontificating on the intrinsic qualities of Hebrew over more modern languages and other erudite exotica by .

For me, most of all, it was lacking any sense of character. I didn't know why anybody acted the way they did, and didn't care, routinely lost track of the characters and who was saying what and didn't care about that either. It seems self indulgent; he writes himself into the story as a kind of hipster anti-hero, complete with a 20 years younger babe - he even discusses another of his books. He goes so far as to "explain" what he sees as the faults in Dante's Divine Comedy. Too much author's ego for me.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would suggest this book for people who enjoy old world literature, but who also like gritty crime reads. It was ambitious, challenging, disturbing, and yes, occasionally overblown and annoying. Still, I'm happy to have tackled this beast. As a subject, Dante Alighieri is obviously near and dear to Nick. This evident in the heavily romanticized passages dedicated to Dante as a character, not to mention the almost anachronistic prose during these passages, which I thought was very beautiful and lyrical. He did tend to get a little show-offy with his Latin and his sociopolitical knowledge of Dante's time, but overall the historical elements of the story were pretty spot-on and flowed well with the real time elements. Some of these characters were sick, sick puppies though, particularly the hit man, Louie, (aka. "The Angel of Death"). I consider myself to have a pretty high tolerance for violence in literature, but a few of the sections involving the sociopathic Louie definitely gave me the creeps. However, regardless of Louie's stomach-churning executions, and Nick's "manly-man"-professing, this book is ripe with suspense, history, enjoyable characters, danger, and tenderness. It also reminded me to track down more of his nonfiction work.

[Dawn (& Ron)]

Had this on my cannot decide to WL but had it in my TBR pile, that speaks volumes! I don't just turn away a book without giving it a shot.

The book summary didn't grab me anymore, not sure why. To be fair, I tried reading a sampling to give me an idea. On the first page there is so much cursing that I'm already turned off by the second paragraph. I don't care for that rough in your face style. Do I want to continue this, well let me check some more? Then I came across this sentence which seemed to sum up my dilemma and ended up decided things for me.

"If I can not now go forth into the silence of this wisdom - as I very soon shall go forth - I must here and now cease to be a writer in the wretched sense of that profession."

It's nothing personal, so many other books are calling my name and so many others yet to come, so you no longer fit into my book future. Sorry this was just not meant to be, maybe you will be better loved elsewhere, so bye-bye.

[Cindy Jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This has to be the worst book I have ever read. I generally have an open mind about books. I'm good at suspending my disbelief. And there are very few books that I have put down and never finished. Unfortunately, I finished this one. I just couldn't believe that it could possibly be so bad, I kept thinking it had to get better. I can't really put my finger on what made it so horrible, but I was really annoyed about how the author wrote himself in as the main character. Beyond that, maybe it was just extreme annoyance at how someone could take a premise with so much promise, and butcher it. I read this book about 4 years ago, and it still haunts me. And not in a good way.

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, but it is not for everyone. In fact I think it is aimed at a small crowd consisting of those who like Dante and can enjoy some grit and crime and profanity along with complex, sometimes very complex, writing. At the least a very unique book. Give it a try, you will know quickly if this works for you or not. ,
Might want to read some Marlowe first!

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm going to guess Nick Tosches is single because I do not think ANYONE would be able to tolerate this foulmouthed egocentric asshole. it really upsets me to think of all the tress cut down to print this tripe.
do not let yourself be sucked in by the somewhat intriguing premise as I was

[Flavia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I ahve to admit I gave up on this book. It felt to me as if the author's need to display his erudition was more important than the story at hand. If I wanted to learn Latin...I would have learned Latin!

[MKat · Rating 1 out of 5]

It sounded absolutely fascinating, but I got about 50 pages in before I gave up. Boring, vulgar, didn't move *at all*. Avoid.

[Elizabeth]

Unrated for reasons of "fuck it, reading this book is a waste of brain cells I could be spending on pretty much anything else."

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing. Love it when an author is courageous enough to write an unsympathetic protagonist. Gangrena...

[Bjkeefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book eons ago, and just now had occasion to remember it, due to a post that I saw on FB (about the many re-translations of the Bible, if you want to know). In any case, I remember absolutely loving this book for many reasons, apart from the funny take Tosches has on biblical interpretation. It's also a good thriller. And one of those books whose pure literary/writerly merit is so high that you want share a quote from practically every page.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

really don't get this book at all.

[Beatriz Coimbra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should get an award for having the will and strengh to finish this book.

[roxana ☆ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nu pot sa pretind ca vreau sa-mi mai pierd timpul cu mizeria asta. DNF 200.

[J.K. Gravier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was engaging and kept me reading, but didn’t leave a great impression afterwards.

The main story was beyond hard-boiled, clichéd and even a little ridiculous in places. The subplot concerning Dante and the writing of the Divine Comedy was compelling and the historical details interesting (especially the material about gematria) ,but in the end it didn’t seem to lead to anything. Maybe that Dante should have spent more time with his wife and family?

[Daniel Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surging tempest of poetic lyricism and insanity. “The only way to paradise begins in hell.”