An excellent translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno, that retains all the style, power, and meaning of the original. This edition of Penguin Classics is translated from Italian with an introduction by Mark Musa. This vivid translation of the Inferno preserves Dante's simple, natural style and captures the swift movement of the original Italian verse. Musa's translation recreates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante's poem had for his contemporaries. Musa's introduction and the comments on each of the cantos illuminate the text exceptionally.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), from a Florentine family, distinguished himself early in the art of lyrical poetry. His first significant work is La Vita Nuova (1292), a sonnet form narrative dedicated to Beatrice Portinari, the great love of his life. It is believed that the Divine Comedy - consisting of three canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso - was written between 1308 and 1320.

If you enjoyed the Inferno, you might also be interested in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, also available in Penguin Classics.

Musa operates on the principle that a translator's first duty is to render the original text as accurately as possible without compromising the literary quality of the work. [This is] the best English-language version of the Inferno available at this time.