The Inferno

by Ciaran Carson

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 vigor, without diminishing the pathos of the original. This is a retelling of Dante's epic journey for the 21st-century reader.

Genres: Classics

320 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2020

About the author

Ciaran Gerard Carson was born in 1948 in Belfast and educated at The Queen’s University, Belfast. He knows intimately not only the urban Belfast in which he was raised as a native Irish speaker, but also the traditions of rural Ireland. A traditional musician and a scholar of the Irish oral traditional, Carson was long the Traditional Arts Officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and is a flutist, tinwhistler, and singer. He is Chair of Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre for poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is married to fiddle player Deirdre Shannon, and has three children.

He is author of over a dozen volumes of poetry, as well as translations of the Táin and of Dante’s Inferno, and novels, non-fiction, and a guide to traditional Irish music. Carson won an Eric Gregory Award in 1978.

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

No words.
And this edition is amazing. Great cover and a very good translation with interesting notes.

[jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

After listening to unreal unearth I can see hozier's vision and how it connects to his music I am very pleased with this translation as someone who is a major Dante fan and of carson's work

[Ido · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely get why this was so highly regarded, after having read Dante in another language, and attempted at it again in English, at least once before.

Carson’s edition is accessible and relevant. I compared a few verses with another edition’s, and found Carson’s translation to be engaging, in a different way, if not more engaging.

The notes in the end are handy too.

Thanks to this edition, I was able to both understand and enjoy the first part of The Divine Comedy.

[Adam Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vigorous telling of the classic, which provides the reader with a whole-hearted and uncompromising translation of the original Dante. Highly recommended!

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vigorous and vivid translation - extremely accessible with great notes.