John Ciardi, a distinguished American poet, has brilliantly rendered the Inferno into modern English, bringing it alive again with all the burning clarity and universal relevance with which the thirteenth century genius originally endowed it. The first part of Dante's Divine Comedy is many things: a moving human drama, a supreme expression of the Middle Ages, a glorification of the ways of God, and a magnificent protest against the ways in which men have thwarted the divine plan. One of the few literary works that has enjoyed a fame both immediate and enduring, The Inferno remains powerful after seven centuries. It confronts the most universal values' good and evil, free will and predestination while remaining intensely personal and ferociously political, for it was born out of the anguish of a man who saw human life blighted by the injustice and corruption of his times.