“I read a great new book called Life of Pi by Yann Martel that draws from the Commedia. It deals with religion and a pilgrimage of sorts. Also, the narrator/author specifically states a desire to tell his story in exactly 100 chapters (which he does). Are there parallels between Virgil and Pi’s tiger? It’s tough to say-I guess you could find some loose similarities between the two figures. The tiger acts as a guide for Pi in the realm of animal survival, helping him to overcome his civilized taboos and do whatever it takes to live. Also, training the tiger and getting enough food to keep it healthy gives Pi a purpose, and keeps him from being overcome by the immensity of his predicament. Pi professes love and admiration for the tiger on many occasions. The book is a really clever religious allegory, and it challenges you to read it on all four levels of interpretation Dante discusses in his letter to Can Grande. It’s a Commedia for the disillusioned 21st century cynic.” –Chris Moxhay
Matthew Pearl, “The Dante Club” (2003)
“1865 Boston, a small group of literary geniuses puts the finishing touches on America’s first translation of The Divine Comedy and prepares to unveil the remarkable visions of Dante to the New World. The powerful old guard of Harvard College wants to keep Dante out–believing that the infiltration of such foreign superstitions onto our bookshelves would prove as corrupting as the foreign immigrants invading Boston harbor. The members of the Dante Club–poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J. T. Fields –endure the intimidation of their fellow Boston Brahmins for a sacred literary cause, an endeavor that has sustained Longfellow in the hellish aftermath of his wife’s tragic death by fire.” —Matthew Pearl
Nick Tosches, “In the Hand of Dante” (2002)
“Deftly blending the sacred and the profane, Tosches boldly casts himself as the protagonist in his latest novel, an outrageously ambitious book in which he procures a purloined version of the original manuscript of ‘The Divine Comedy’ while tracing Dante’s journey as Dante struggled to complete his penultimate work. The initial chapters find Tosches looking back and questioning the results of his fascinating life and career, with a brief but devastating aside about the decline of publishing. But Tosches suddenly emerges from his morbid nostalgia when a former character named Louie (a gangster from Tosches’s Cut Numbers) gets his hands on a stolen copy of Dante’s manuscript and asks Tosches to authenticate it. That sends the author on a whirlwind tour to Arizona, Chicago, Paris and then London as he tries to verify the work and then determine its worth on the open market.” [. . .] –Publishers Weekly, Amazon
Jane Langton, “The Dante Game: A Homer Kelly Mystery” (1992)
“The latest Homer Kelly mystery unfolds in Italy, where he joins the faculty of the newly formed American School of Florentine Studies. As students and professors read their way through Dante’s Divine Comedy , they and the author draw parallels to modern-day Florence, where a bank official (and secret heroin smuggler) plots to assassinate the anti-drug-crusading Pope, using a Beatrice-like student as hostage. After three murders at the school, Homer and a friend investigate. The novel’s strolling pace accelerates only near the very end, but there is adequate amusement for Langton or Dante fans, or both.” –Library Journal, Amazon
Sarah Lovett, “Dantes’ Inferno: A Dr. Sylvia Strange Novel” (2002)
“The author of the critically acclaimed novels Dangerous Attachments and Acquired Motives is back with another spellbindingly original thriller featuring forensic psychiatrist Sylvia Strange. Now, in Dantes’ Inferno, Sylvia is called to Los Angeles from her New Mexico home when a massive explosion blasts through the J. Paul Getty Museum, endangering children on a field trip and claiming two lives. The police peg notorious bomber John Dantes as the mastermind, even though he’s in a maximum-security prison, serving a life sentence for another bombing he claims he didn’t commit.” [. . .] —Amazon
