In an unnamed land, a ferocious dictator torments his people with arbitrary violence, repression, and abuse: “Those who stood against him were shot. The poor were persecuted, humiliated, and insulted in a hundred ways.” The only one who dares oppose him is a young boy named Giacomo, whose body is made of crystal. Also crystal clear are Giacomo’s thoughts, feelings, and anger, which everyone can see through his transparent body.

The dictator doesn’t consider sincerity a virtue in his subjects — and duly has the boy jailed. But Giacomo manages to inspire subversion even from within his cell, which seems to turn into crystal with his presence, allowing him to transmit his thoughts to the outside world. The tale reaches its striking conclusion:

At night, the prison would give off a great light, and the tyrant in his palace would close his curtains to unsee it, yet he was still unable to fall asleep. Crystal Giacomo — even in chains — was stronger than him, because truth is stronger than anything else, more luminous than the day itself, more terrible than a hurricane.