Inferno

'Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them. There is no third.' - T. S. Eliot 'Dante's poem is, for many, the greatest single work of Western literature.' - Ian Thompson. 'I love my Dante as much as the Bible. He is my spiritual food, the rest is ballast.' - James Joyce. In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood/Bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way: so opens Dante's Divine Comedy, 'the best book literature has achieved' as Jorge Luis Borges writes. Dante's Inferno, one of the greatest works of European literature, and 'the most original and audacious treatment of the afterlife in Western literature' dazzles with its vivid and inventive storytelling and imagery. However, it contains much more than poetry and theology; it displays Dante's wide and comprehensive learning, and his deep understanding of contemporary politics and society. 'All life is contained in the poem, for Dante's was an all-encompassing imagination, that interwove