Inferno

Abandon all hope ye who enter here. 

Dante’s Hell is one of the most remarkable visions in Western literature. An allegory for his and future ages, it is also an account of terrifying realism. Passing under a lintel emblazoned with these frightening words, the poet is led down into the depths by Virgil and shown those doomed to suffer eternal torment for vices exhibited and sins committed on Earth. 

Inferno is the first part of the long journey which continues through Purgatory and Paradise to redemption and revelation, and, in this translation prepared especially for audio by Benedict Flynn, Dante’s images remain as vivid as when the poem was first written in the early years of the fourteenth century.