The System of Dante's Hell (AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series)
A reissue of a 1965 novel, a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, spiraling out of Dante's Inferno. A pungent and lyrical portrait of mid-’60s black protest.” ―Kirkus Reviews With a new introduction by Woodie King Jr. This 1965 novel is a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, structured on the themes of Dante’s Inferno: violence, incontinence, fraud, treachery. With a poet’s skill, Baraka creates the atmosphere of hell, and with dramatic power he reconstructs the brutality of the black slums of Newark, a small Southern town, and New York City. The episodes contained within the novel represent both states of mind and states of the soul―lyrical, fragmentary, and allusive.