Overview

""From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantanamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares."" --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America A Penguin Classic ""From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantanamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares."" --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America A Penguin Classic From the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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9780143131625

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Reviews

You will be [frightened] by The Penguin Book of Hell, in which writers from antiquity to the 20th century describe the eternal, infernal hereafter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. --The Washington Post This fascinating collection kept me reading long after midnight, and the images it put in my head kept me up even longer. A deeply engaging read. --Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, The Best Horror Nonfiction Books of 2018

Now that I know what Hell is like, I shall take more pains to avoid it. This is an amazing collection. --Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass You will be [frightened] by The Penguin Book of Hell, in which writers from antiquity to the 20th century describe the eternal, infernal hereafter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. --The Washington Post This fascinating collection kept me reading long after midnight, and the images it put in my head kept me up even longer. A deeply engaging read. --Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, The Best Horror Nonfiction Books of 2018 One of the prime motives of these texts is rage, rage against people occupying positions of exceptional trust and power who lie and cheat and trample on the most basic values and yet who escape the punishment they so manifestly deserve. History is an unending chronicle of such knaves, and it is a chronicle too of frustration and impotence, certainly among the mass of ordinary people but even among those who feel that they are stakeholders in the system. Hell is the last recourse of political impotence. You console yourself . . . by imagining that the loathsome characters you detest will meet their comeuppance in the afterlife. --Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Review of Books

Now that I know what Hell is like, I shall take more pains to avoid it. This is an amazing collection. --Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass Quite terrifying. --The New Yorker You will be [frightened] by The Penguin Book of Hell, in which writers from antiquity to the 20th century describe the eternal, infernal hereafter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. --The Washington Post This fascinating collection kept me reading long after midnight, and the images it put in my head kept me up even longer. A deeply engaging read. --Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, The Best Horror Nonfiction Books of 2018 One of the prime motives of these texts is rage, rage against people occupying positions of exceptional trust and power who lie and cheat and trample on the most basic values and yet who escape the punishment they so manifestly deserve. History is an unending chronicle of such knaves, and it is a chronicle too of frustration and impotence, certainly among the mass of ordinary people but even among those who feel that they are stakeholders in the system. Hell is the last recourse of political impotence. You console yourself . . . by imagining that the loathsome characters you detest will meet their comeuppance in the afterlife. --Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Review of Books

Now that I know what Hell is like, I shall take more pains to avoid it. This is an amazing collection. --Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass Quite terrifying. --The New Yorker You will be [frightened] by The Penguin Book of Hell, in which writers from antiquity to the 20th century describe the eternal, infernal hereafter. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. --The Washington Post This fascinating collection kept me reading long after midnight, and the images it put in my head kept me up even longer. A deeply engaging read. --Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books, The Best Horror Nonfiction Books of 2018 One of the prime motives of these texts is rage, rage against people occupying positions of exceptional trust and power who lie and cheat and trample on the most basic values and yet who escape the punishment they so manifestly deserve. History is an unending chronicle of such knaves, and it is a chronicle too of frustration and impotence, certainly among the mass of ordinary people but even among those who feel that they are stakeholders in the system. Hell is the last recourse of political impotence. You console yourself . . . by imagining that the loathsome characters you detest will meet their comeuppance in the afterlife. --Stephen Greenblatt, The New York Review of Books Disturbing . . . Full of classic representations of eternal punishment. --America: The Jesuit Review

Author Information

Scott G. Bruce (editor) is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Undead, The Penguin Book of Dragons, and The Penguin Book of Demons, and the author of three books about the abbey of Cluny. He is a professor of history at Fordham University in New York City. He worked his way through college as a grave digger.

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