This bust of Dante watches over a University of Virginia library.
Nathaniel Rich, Odds Against Tomorrow (2013)
Mitchell Zukor, the protagonist of Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow, suffers from panic attacks and often uses phrases like “going to a deeper circle in hell.”
Rich’s website describes the novel:
“New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician, is hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld. The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building; Mitchell is employee number two. [. . .]
“As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastrophe–ecological collapse, war games, natural disasters–he becomes obsessed by a culture’s fears. [. . .]
“Then, just as Mitchell’s predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst-case scenario overtakes Manhattan. [. . .]
“At once an all-too plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization. The future is not quite what it used to be.” —Nathaniel Rich’s Website
Contributed by Thomas Jonkergouw, Universiteit Utrecht
Adventure Time, “Return to the Nightosphere” (2012)
Season 4, Episode 5 of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time is set in the hellish “Nightosphere.” It alludes to Dante’s Inferno: its protagonists, Finn and Jake, find themselves there not knowing how they got there; they pass through an imposing gate to meet with the ruler of the Nightosphere; they meet a character rowing a boat over condemned souls.
Watch the full episode here.
Contributed by Allison Kim, University of Texas at Austin
Francesco Fioretti, La Selva Oscura (2015)
La Selva Oscura is Italian author and Dante scholar Francesco Fioretti‘s latest book, published in January 2015. The thriller is a reinterpretation of the Inferno in modern Italian. Fioretti has already begun a novel based on Purgatorio, and intends to have published novels corresponding to each of the three canticles by 2021, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Fioretti is also the author of Il Libro Segreto di Dante (2011) and La Profezia Perduta di Dante (2013).
“Scopo dichiarato dell’autore è offrire ‘anche al lettore non specialista la preziosa opportunità, (in Italia data di solito solo agli addetti ai lavori), di leggere la prima cantica del poema dantesco dall’inizio alla fine, come un romanzo contemporaneo’, proprio come avviene in altri paesi dove è possibile leggere La Commedia in traduzione , nelle rispettive lingue moderne.” —Repubblica.it, “Come un thriller l’Inferno di Dante in italiano moderno”
Click here to read an interview with Fioretti about his novel.
“Let it Go,” Dante’s Inferno Version (2014)
As part of a short film, “Chauncy Cobra and the Writing on the Wall,” students wrote and performed a parody of “Let it Go” from Disney’s Frozen. In the song, Dante laments his time spent in Hell, begging Beatrice, “Let me go!”
Watch the music video here.
Contributed by Mary Margaret Blum (Gettysburg College, ’18)
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