For the first time in Russian, “The Secret Book of Dante,” a novel by Francesco Fioretti, a representative of a new generation in Italian literature, one of the heirs of Umberto Eco. Did Dante really die of a fatal disease, as everyone in Ravenna believed? Or did someone have reason to want him dead, to want a secret that did not belong to him to disappear with him? Tormented by doubts, the poet's daughter Antonia, a former Templar named Bernard and the doctor Giovanni, who came from Lucca to see the poet, begin a double investigation. They find hidden tables and try to decipher the coded message left by Dante. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that not everyone was enthusiastic about the poet. But who exactly hated him so much that they sent assassins to kill him? And what connects the code of the last songs of the Divine Comedy with the secret of the Ark of the Covenant?