by Dante Alighieri
In this new rendition of a timeless classic, Italian scholar Elio Zappulla captures the majesty and enduring grandeur of the Inferno, the first of the three canticles of Dante's Divine Comedy - unarguably one of the masterpieces of world literature. Rendering Dante's terza rima in lyrical blank verse, Zapulla's translation makes accessible to the modern reader the journey of the famed Florentine poet Dante through the nine circles of hell. With Virgil as his guide, Dante descends through horrific landscapes of the damned - through dark forests, boiling muck, and burning plains filled with scenes of unspeakable punishment, lamentation, and terror - depicted with a gruesome detail unmatched in all of literature.
While reflecting the civic and religious strife of 14th-century Florence, the Inferno also poses the ageless moral questions of how humanity should live. Richly annotated, this highly readable translation takes the reader on a psychological odyssey whose imaginative discoveries make clear why this work persists at the heart of Western culture.
