PENGUIN The Divine Comedy: Paradise

Was in good Condition, Had all the pages.

I researched, and researched a little more until I could perfectly convince myself to buy this translation. Mark Musa has done a good job. From the all the information I gathered, this one is the perfect start, easy to understand, smooth writing with additional notes.Only, the packaging was not up to the mark.

Humbling in many ways, to read a book such as this.

After giving up on this volume of The Divine Comeday several times in my younger years, I decided to give the work another try. I thought maybe maturity would make it manageable this time. That did help, but the real key to my finishing and benefiting from my experience with Paradise this timewas the inspired translation by Mark Musa. Mr. Musa obviously thought it more important for readers to understand what Dante meant, rather than just providing a word-for-word rendition of the original text, which was after all written in medieval Italian. He also provides plentiful notes and longer explanatory passages. I would recommend this edition to all who are interested in unpacking this monument of medieval literature to stimulate their own thinking about human destiny even in this modern age.

I bought these 3 volumes for a course, which was then postponed indefinitely. But since I'd already started reading, I kept at it. I'd tried reading/studying the Divine Comedy before, without success - too dry. The translator of this version is just excellent, presenting the text in a beautiful flowing, readable English.