Welcome to hell. On Good Friday evening in the year 1300, Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood. The ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety but the path lies through the terrifying kingdom of Satan. On his journey deep into the underworld, Dante crosses paths with both old acquaintances and famous characters from history as he witnesses the strange and gruesome sufferings of the damned. Written while Dante was in exile and under threat of being burned at the stake, this dramatic, frightening, and, at times, sardonically humorous vision of hell is of the best known and most admired artistic works in the Western tradition. Its influence on culture cannot be overestimated, extending to, among many other artists and works, Botticelli, William Blake, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Salvador Dalí, The Wizard of Oz, Neil Gaiman, Betty Ford, Radiohead, and Thomas Harris.