PARADISE
Dante's Divine Trilogy Part Three. Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray & Dante Alighieri
Available as Hardback, eBook
The final book from the late Alasdair Gray – the conclusion to his remarkable interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy
‘Reveals Gray’s powers of insight and invention’ Guardian
‘One of the most vital retellings of the poem to date’ Spectator
Dante, now guided by Beatrice, faces the final third of his epic journey through the wheels of divine justice. Yet as he passes through the spheres of Heaven, he struggles with his faith, striving to understand the scales of good and evil that determine the fate of a human soul.
The final book from Alasdair Gray, Paradise is a fitting conclusion to his own irreplaceable body of work, as well as to his masterful retelling of Dante’s trilogy.
“A work of taut cadence and vigour that captures the drum-beat rhythms and lyric beauty of Dante’s original. Daringly, it draws on words and speech patterns of Gray’s native Scotland (‘bairns’, ‘midden’, ‘gloaming’, ‘blethering’), which accord well with Dante’s everyday volgare and make for an adventurous rehabilitation … One of the most vital retellings of the poem to date”
spectator
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“A fitting finale. Published posthumously, the last of three Dante translations reveals Gray’s powers of insight and invention … Unlike many other translators, [Gray] was rather like Dante: astonishingly inventive; an insider-outsider in his own land, who profoundly understood the relationship between language, dialect and power; a fearless iconoclast unafraid to combine historical and contemporary subjects in his work; a true geographer of the imagination”
Ian Sansom
guardian, Book Of The Day
“Published posthumously, the third instalment of Alasdair Gray’s “Englishing” of Dante’s Divine Comedy is a welcome reminder of the brilliant strangeness of the original … Brisk, breezy and eminently readable”
Stuart Kelly
scotsman
“Will be relished by everyone who admired the artist and author. Beautifully bound in his unique style, his posthumously published vision of heaven would combine wonderfully with the previous volumes on Hell and Purgatory, making a welcome gift for lovers of art, poetry and the late, great Alasdair Gray”
herald
”Praise for Dante’s Divine Trilogy: Alasdair Gray has cast a spell over Dante’s Hell, creating (and decorating) a verse translation that is modern, lyrical, yet faithful to the original”
new Statesman, Best Books Of 2018
Alasdair Gray & Dante Alighieri
Born in 1934, Alasdair Gray graduated in design and mural painting from the Glasgow School of Art. Since 1981, when Lanark was published by Canongate, he authored, designed and illustrated seven novels, several books of short stories, a collection of his stage, radio and TV plays and a book of his visual art, A Life in Pictures. In November 2019, he received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Saltire Society. He died in December 2019, aged eighty-five.