These exquisite and collectible editions are published as a part of Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series. Designed by the multi-award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, the series features editions that are bound in high-quality, colorful, and tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. Inferno depicts a harsh underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of the seven deadly sins. This depiction of the underworld is a description of Dante’s descent into Hell in the middle of his life, with Virgil serving as his guide. Dante meets other damned souls as he travels downward through nine concentric circles of increasingly excruciating torture. These souls include the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicidal Cleopatra, and Dante’s own political enemies, who are damned for their deceit. In the end, the poet will have to travel with Virgil to the most profound level there is, and they will be led there by sneering demons because the only way for him to comprehend the gravity of the situation is to have a face-to-face encounter with Satan himself, deep within the bowels of Hell.
