An artful new translation of Dante’s ‘Paradiso’

“[D. M.] Black shows us why Dante matters, and how, 700 years after his death, he can still help us to understand what may give meaning to our own lives.” —Robert Chandler, Financial Times PARADISO Dante Alighieri Translated from the Italian and with an introduction by D. M. Black Paradiso brings The Divine Comedy to a virtuosic and visionary end. This final leg of Dante's journey from Hell into the presence of God is for many the most memorable stretch of the poem, a musical and mystical interweaving of mind and heart and transported sense that is unlike anything else in world literature. This new English rendering of Paradiso by the poet D. M. Black, whose Purgatorio won the 2022 National Translation Award in Poetry, re-creates this masterpiece with fidelity and clarity. Cleansed of sin after his grueling trek up Mount Purgatory, Dante's pilgrim sets out to explore the celestial spheres under the guidance of his childhood sweetheart and lifelong muse, Beatrice. As he moves from the moon to the planets to the Primum Mobile and beyond, encountering emperors, heroes, saints, members of his family, and various other redeemed sinners, he contemplates optics, angels, free will, mercy, and love. Written at a time of great political turmoil in Italy and great personal anxiety in Dante's life, Paradiso wrestles with many questions that have echoes in our own disturbing times. It is a book about the shape of the universe and how to find one's place within it, composed with inventive daring and linguistic ingenuity as Dante stretches language to its very limits, striving to make vivid and tangible the ineffable and sublime. “The Divine Comedy is a constant reminder . . . to explore, to find words for the inarticulate, to capture those feelings which people can hardly even feel, because they have no words for them.” —T. S. Eliot BUY THE BOOK   For three days only, Paradiso is available at 25% off along with the two other volumes of Dante’s The Divine Comedy: PURGATORIO Dante Alighieri Translated by D. M. Black BUY THE BOOK THE INFERNO OF DANTE ALIGHIERI Translated by Ciaran Carson BUY THE BOOK   Join the Editor of New York Review Books for a Series of Seminars We live in a political world, per Bob Dylan, and the song suggests that is not such a good thing. The modern novel grew up alongside the modern political world, and has kept a fascinated and incredulous eye on it for the last few centuries. In these seminars, Edwin Frank, Editor of New York Review Books, will look at four novelists—Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, and Ursula K. Le Guin—and their different visions of politics.  The first seminar series on Anthony Trollope will consist of four weekly sessions beginning Monday, September 8, 2025.  LEARN MORE AND REGISTER HERE   You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences   New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street New York, NY 10016-6305 Not a subscriber? Sign up for our newsletter here. Unsubscribe