Inferno (Vintage Classics) - Softcover

Alighieri, Dante

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099583429 ISBN 13: 9780099583424

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2013

Synopsis

A fresh, quick-paced, modern verse translation of this influential and still shocking classic Welcome to hell. On Good Friday evening in the year 1300, Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood. The ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety but the path lies through the terrifying kingdom of Satan. On his journey deep into the underworld, Dante crosses paths with both old acquaintances and famous characters from history as he witnesses the strange and gruesome sufferings of the damned. Written while Dante was in exile and under threat of being burned at the stake, this dramatic, frightening, and, at times, sardonically humorous vision of hell is of the best known and most admired artistic works in the Western tradition. Its influence on culture cannot be overestimated, extending to, among many other artists and works, Botticelli, William Blake, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Salvador Dalí, The Wizard of Oz, Neil Gaiman, Betty Ford, Radiohead, and Thomas Harris.

About this title

About the Author:

Dante Alighieri is the famed author of The Divine Comedy, largely considered the greatest literary work in the Italian vernacular. Steve Ellis also translated Dante's Hell, and is the author of Chaucer and Virginia Woolf and the Victorians.

Review:

   · "Energetic, racy, rude and lyrical...buy this translation and spend a damn good season in hell." --Independent 

   · "A tour de force, alive, immediate, energetic and very moving." --A.S. Byatt 

   · "Excellent. Dante's vision vibrates again in all its original colour.The effect is dazzling." --Independent on Sunday

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0099583429
• ISBN 13: 9780099583424
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240