The Divine Comedy

Lost in a dark wood halfway through life, Dante is led by the poet Virgil down through the nine descending circles of Hell, up the terraced mountain of Purgatory, and finally into the radiant spheres of Paradise, guided in the end by his beloved Beatrice. Written in exile and completed shortly before his death, The Divine Comedy fused theology, politics, and personal vendetta into a vision of the afterlife so vivid it reshaped how the Western world pictured Heaven and Hell for seven centuries. Every circle of the Inferno still has the power to unsettle. The original journey to the underworld and back.