We are in Turin, Italy's industrial capital, in a quarter populated by emigrants from the South. Lino, the main character of our story, lives a life of poverty: he is unemployed up to his ears in debts, and sleeps with his nephew in his sister's home. He works only sporadically in the market as assistant to a dishonest fishmonger who sys-tematically swindles his clients. His friends are also social outcasts: one of them peddles pirate records, another sells contraband goods, while his girl Rossana works as a cashier in a bar and has been waiting twelve years for better times to come along. The bar is a kind of refuge for this community of outsiders. And it's here, when he meets Jerry, nicknamed "The Word", that a miracle occurs to change their lives. In fact "The Word" persuades Lino to fill out a football pool coupon, which wins. The win is enormous: over one billion lire! Lino and "The Word" realise, however, that if they let it be known that they have won, friends and relatives will besiege them. So in order to deviate suspicion, they begin to live even worse than before, when they really were poverty-stricken. The others do their best to catch them out, setting various traps in the hope of discovering the truth. But Lino and Jerry hold out coura-geously, and pass the most strenuous and diabolical tests. Once they have cashed the sum, they leave for San Remo, the para-dise for rich holidaymakers, but Fate has an infinity of surprises in store for them...