blueschala 's review for:

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Clive James
3.0

Disclaimer: I received an advance reading copy of Clive James' translation as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

There's not much for me to say that hasn't already been said about Dante's Divine Comedy, so I'll focus my review on the specific translation that I read.

This was my second time reading Inferno, but my first time reading Purgatorio and Paradiso, so I can't speak to the accuracy of the translation. There were parts of it that felt a little anachronistic, and others that were hard to understand because of the way sentences were structured to fit the rhyming scheme. Also, due to the lack of footnotes, a lot of the historical references went over my head.

That's not to say this isn't a good translation. I was able to follow along for most of it. I think Clive James' translation would be excellent for someone who wants to read Dante's work and either doesn't like footnotes or would rather just do the research themselves. Personally, I could have used some notes for clarification.