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This startling new translation of Dante's Inferno is by Ciaran Carson, one of contemporary Ireland's most dazzlingly gifted poets. Written in a vigorous and inventive contemporary idiom, while also reproducing the intricate rhyme-scheme that is so essential to the beauty and power of Dante's epic, Carson's virtuosic rendering of the Inferno is that rare thing—a translation with the heft and force of a true English poem. Like Seamus Heaney's Beowulf and Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid, Ciaran Carson's Inferno is an extraordinary modern response to one of the great works of world literature.

Follows the spiritual pilgrim as he puts behind him the horrors of Hell and the trials of Pugatory to ascend to Paradise, where he encounters his beloved Beatrice and meets the Heavenly Court and the Lord.

The poem discusses "the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward",[4] and describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

"Inferno" is the first part of the 14th-century epic poem "Divine Comedy," written by the Italian writer Dante Alighieri. This part preceded the other two - Purgatorio and Paradiso. In the poem, Dante makes a journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. There he sees the sufferings of those who have rejected spiritual values. Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth, with every next circle marked by growing severity of suffering, which also corresponds to the severity of sin undertaken by a soul. The spiritual message of the poem is about the recognition and rejection of sin.