November 12, 2003: A suicide attack on the Italian military base in Nasiriyah, Iraq, leaves twenty-eight dead, including nineteen Italian soldiers and civilians, and scores more wounded. Among the survivors is a young, brash, and in some ways naive Roman filmmaker, Aureliano Amadei, who has arrived only the day before to scout locations for a movie. Gravely injured in the attack, Amadei uses the long months of his recovery to reflect upon the circumstances that took him to Nasiriyah, the contradictions of the Italian military presence in Iraq, his country's response to the "Nasiryah Massacre"...