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Paperback The System of Dante's Hell Book

ISBN: 1617753963

ISBN13: 9781617753961

The System of Dante's Hell

"Much of the novel is an expression of the intellectual and moral lost motion of the age . . . the special agony of the American Negro." --New York Times Book Review

"A fevered and impressionistic riff on the struggles of blacks in the urban North and rural South, as told through the prism of The Inferno. . . . Other writers addressed race more directly, but for all its linguistic slipperiness, Baraka's language conveys the feelings of fear, violation, and fury with a surprising potency. 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.

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Temporarily Unavailable

We receive fewer than 1 copy every 6 months.

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Customer Reviews

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Rated 5 stars
Before He was a Homophobe, He was Gay

This is an excellent autobiographical novel about the coming of age of a young, Black, male homosexual. He grapples with issues of insecurity and shame. Anyone familiar with the work of Amiri Baraka (formerly known as Leroy Jones, and then LeRoi Jones) knows that he is extremely homophobic and heterosexist. He is vicious and searing in his hatred of gays. And yet he himself is gay. Of course he covers that up now and will...

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