The story kicks off by the end of April 1982, when Beatrice Algheri - a young Latinist from Cambridge University, doing research work in the Vatican manuscript reading room - by coincidence lays her hands on an officially unknown, thus never translated, 11th century manuscript in Latin, revealing the blueprints of several Shaespeare plays in Italian settings. Spurred on by this sensational discovery, and together with an unexpected companion, the Iranian diplomat Fahrad Ghazeli, she undertakes a journey which initially leads them to Padua. Here the haunting hunch grows into a quest for a truth so astounding that it will rock the entire Shakespearean scholar community to its core.