Inferno, the first volume of Dante's Divine Comedy, is an imaginitive tour de force. Dante's hero, Virgil, guides him through hell, showing him the inhabitants of each of its nine circles and examples of the divine justice meted out to them. Ciaran Carson's translation of the text is suffused with wit, anger and irreverent vigour and attempts not to diminish the pathos of the original. This is a retelling of Dante's epic journey for the twenty-first-century reader.