The tormented life of Dante Alighieri, from solitary childhood to death in exile, seen through Giovanni Boccaccio’s journey to rehabilitate his memory.

In 1950s Italy, a government official arrives in a rural town to investigate a grisly child murder. The culprit is a young boy who claims to have acted in order to kill the Devil himself.

When his destituite widowed sister-in-law—whom he had never stopped harbouring feelings for—and her ne'er-do-well son come to live with him after World War II, a mentally-ill farmer who spends all his time destroying unexploded ordnance scattered across the countryside finds a new purpose in his lonely life.