3 Review(s)

The first section of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, Inferno, describes the endless torment that is meted out for sins including greed, self-deception, political deceit, and betrayal. Robin Kirkpatrick translated, edited, and added annotations to this Penguin Classics version. Inferno, which describes Dante's journey into Hell with Virgil as a guide in the middle of his life, paints a brutal picture of an afterlife where desperate people are sentenced to perpetual torment for committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. Dante sees damned souls like the heathen Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicidal Cleopatra, and his own political foes, damned for their treachery, as he descends through nine concentric rings of increasingly agonising suffering.