Hell and Back: Reflections on Writers and Writing from Dante to Rushdie

British novelist and essayist Tim Parks (Destiny, Adultery and Other Diversions) meditates on literature, art, and translation in Hell and Back: Reflections of Writers and Writing from Dante to Rushdie. The book includes close readings of contemporary writers like Ian Buruma and the late W.G. Sebald, as well as high modernists like Joyce and Borges, and Henry Green. Parks is also a translator of Italian, and there are a number of sketches of Italian writers (Italo Svevo, Eugenio Montale) and a piece on fascist painter Mario Sironi (Feb.)