Dante's immortal poem enters English in the clearest, most accurate, most readable translation in decades, accompanied by a commentary of unsurpassed scholarship.

The Inferno, the opening section of Dante Alighieri's epic theological poem La Divina Commedia, is one of the indispensable works of the Western literary canon. The modern concept of hell and damnation owes everything to this work, and it is the rock upon which vernacular Italian was built. Its influence is woven into the very fabric of Western imagination, and poets, painters, scholars, and translators return to it endlessly.

This new verse translation (with facing-page Italian text) by internationally famed scholar and master teacher Robert Hollander and his wife, poet Jean Hollander, is a unique collaboration that combines the virtues of maximum readability with complete fidelity to the original Italian-and to Dante's intentions and subtle shadings of meaning. The book reflects Robert Hollander's faultless Dante scholarship and his nearly four decades' teaching experience at Princeton. The introduction, notes, and commentary on the poem cannot be matched for their depth of learning and usefulness for the lay reader. In addition, the book matches the English and Italian text on the Web site of the Princeton Dante Project, which also offers a voiced Italian reading, fuller-scale commentaries, and links to a database of some sixty Dante commentaries.

The Inferno opens the glories of Dante's epic wider for English speakers than any previous translation, and provides the interpretative apparatus for ever-deeper excursions into its endless layers of meaning and implication. It is truly a Dante for the new millennium.