Overview

The first volume of Dante Alighieri's iconic Divine Comedy translated by Ciaran Carson. A retelling of Dante's epic journey for the 21st-century reader. 'Quite simply the best version of Dante there is' PAUL MULDOON, Irish Times. Almost eight centuries after its first publication, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy remains an icon of Italian literature and of the epic genre. In Inferno, the first volume, the poet Virgil leads Dante's hero through hell, showing him the inhabitants of each of its nine circles and examples of the divine justice meted out to them. In this beautifully produced Apollo Library edition, Ciaran Carson's translation suffuses the text with wit, anger and irreverent vigour, without diminishing the pathos of the original. This is a retelling of Dante's epic journey for the twenty-first-century reader.

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9781838933234

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Reviews

'An excellent translation, full of powerful and arresting images ... Carson's colloquial glee, drawing freely from the language he hears on Belfast streets, makes The Inferno come alive. It has spit as well as polish ... Carson has created something pithy and original' Independent. 'Carson gives us a much racier Inferno than most others have done, one in which the language makes eloquent upward soarings at one moment and vulgar dives deep into the vernacular at the next, moving like a bolt of lightning from gravity to punch immediacy. There is a surprising amount of playful humour. It reads jauntily, even balladically at times' Financial Times. 'Quite simply the best version of Dante there is' Paul Muldoon, Irish Times. 'Ciaran Carson's version of Dante's Inferno is the first I've read in which the English (because Irish really) seemed so kickingly alive' Ali Smith, Scotsman.

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Durante degli Alighieri, or Dante (c. 1265–1321), was one of the major Italian poets of the Middle Ages and is referred to as the father of the Italian language. His ‘Divine Comedy’ is widely considered to be the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.

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