Dante's Inferno

Chronicle Books. Chronicle Books, $22.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-4213-6

With 68 7 1/2"" x 11"" b&w engravings that include helicopters, parking lots, shwarma stands, strip malls, chain-link fences, concrete stairs and skyscrapers, Dante's Inferno is brought into the present by illustrator Sandow Brik, and into English by Brik and Marcus Sanders, a contributing editor to Surfline.com. Their sophisticated Valley-speak (""the ghosts approached us, all totally deadpan, with zero emotion"") may not be for everyone, but it is in synch with Dante's vernacular masterpiece.

Featured Fiction Reviews

Canisia Lubrin

Windham Campbell Prize–winning poet Lubrin (Voodoo Hypothesis) makes her fiction debut with a thrilling and inventive collection centered on Black life in the Caribbean and the Continue reading »

Michel Nieva

Argentine writer Nieva sets his ingenious and outré English-language debut, expanded from an O. Henry Prize–winning short story, in a far-future world radically altered by Continue reading »

Jack Wang

In this exemplary historical, a Chinese Canadian man fights prejudice and falls in love during WWII. Josiah Chang, who’s unable to join the army because of his race, finds work Continue reading »

Gerald Murnane

This spectacular novel from Murnane (Inland), originally published in Australia in 2009, takes the form of an internal dialogue about the images, memories, and obsessions the Continue reading »