PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Dante Alighieri's (1265-1321) most famous works are The New Life, which is available in the NYRB Poets series in a translation by Dante Gabriel Rosetti; De vulgari eloquentia, a defense of the use of the vernacular in literature; and his epic vision of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy. NYRB Classics also publishes Dante's Inferno in a translation by Ciaran Carson. D. M. Black is the author of seven poetry collections, includingClaiming Kindred (2011) andThe Arrow Maker (2017). He editedPsychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century- Competitors or Collaborators? (2006), and is the author ofWhy Things Matter- The Place of Values in Science, Psychoanalysis and Religion (2011). He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and lives in London. Robert Pogue Harrison is a critic, radio host, and the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature at Stanford University. His most recent book is Juvenescence- A Cultural History of Our Age.
Praise for Hell: Alasdair Gray has cast a spell over Dante's Hell, creating (and decorating) a verse translation that is modern, lyrical, yet faithful to the original New Statesman Powerfully conveys the appalling nature of a vision which has terrified and enthralled Western men and women down the centuries Times Literary Supplement No other translator has made the narratives so clear or strong, and the distinctive power of the work lies in the clarity of the storytelling . . . This Hell is a magnificent feat of reimagining of one of the greatest of all human creations Herald Slick, easy to read . . . Gray is rather good at catching the colloquial nature of the poem . . . An excellent primer to Dante . . . In terms of verve, vim and vigor Gray has succeeded here. It is, if such a thing can be, an 'easy' Dante, and one that does capture the comedy as well as the pathos and anguish of the poem Scotsman
