<B>“This will be the Dante for the next generation” (<I>Publishers Weekly</I>, starred review)—now available in paperback</B><BR><BR><P>Stopped mid-motion in the middle<BR>Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky—<BR>Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.<BR> —from Canto I<BR><BR>“The only good Hell to be in right now is poet Mary Jo Bang’s innovative, new translation of Dante’s <I>Inferno</I>, illustrated with drawings by Henrik Drescher. Bang’s thrillingly contemporary translation of the first part (the juiciest part) of Alighieri’s fourteenth-century poem <I>The Divine Comedy</I> is indeed epic . . . Once you embark on this journey, you may wish to read not only all of Mary Jo Bang’s work but all of Dante’s, too.” —<I>Vanity Fair</I><BR> <BR>“Imagine a contemporary translation of Dante that includes references to Pink Floyd, South Park, Donald Rumsfeld, and <I>Star Trek</I>. Now imagine that this isn’t gimmicky . . . Imagine instead that the old warhorse is now scary again, and perversely funny, and lyrical and faux-lyrical in a way that sounds sometimes like Auden, sometimes like Nabokov, but always like Mary Jo Bang.” —<I>BOMB</I>