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Dark Dante – Book Presentation with Maggie Rose

Dark Dante

Author Maggie Rose presents online her book Dark Dante on Thursday, 31st March 2022 at 5.30 pm (UK time), in conversation with Itala Vivan and Adele D’Arcangelo.

Maggie Rose’s mystery thriller, based in Florence, explores Dante’s epic poem Inferno, and shows its startling relevance in contemporary Italy.

Dark Dante unfolds in Florence in the spring of 2000, exactly seven hundred years after Dante Alighieri set his Inferno there; disgusted with the corruption of his contemporaries, the poet decides to punish the ill-doers of his day in his magnificent poem. In this engaging and evocative mystery thriller, a string of horrendous murders is committed in quick succession. Seeing that the Italian police are making little headway finding the culprit, Maria Farrell, the niece of the first victim, Peter Farrell, decides to investigate. Because of a family feud, she never met Peter, a specialist in art history, who lived in Florence most of his life. A theatre director from Manchester, Maria shrewdly exploits her professional skills and knowledge of Shakespeare’s theatre in her attempt to solve the murders.

Caught in a web of mystery and grappling to understand the mindset of the Italians she encounters, this unusual detective follows “the Dante trail”, in the conviction that somebody in Florence, obsessed by Dante, may have decided to mete out the punishments described in the Inferno all those centuries before. Maria’s investigation reveals much about her uncle Peter and the fascinating medley of friends in his inner circle. And importantly a growing friendship with one of the detectives on the murder case leads Maria to reconsider her priorities in life. About to leave for England, she resolves to return to Florence very soon to see her new friend and hopefully discover more about the enigmatic figure of ‘Dark Dante’

About the book the author says: “In contrast to Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’, Dark Dante presents Dante and his Inferno in a much more everyday context, where we meet Italians from different backgrounds, some of whom have lived and breathed Dante all their lives. Through them, the work and thought of Italy’s greatest poet, ‘ il Sommo Poeta’, resonates loudly in the present, impacting on the twists and turns of the story.

Maggie Rose lives in Milan. She is a playwright and teacher, whose work has been published and performed in Italy and Scotland. For most of her life, she has travelled between Britain and Italy, sometimes building cultural bridges between the two countries. Dark Dante is her first novel.

Itala Vivan is Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies, formerly at the School of Political Science, University of Milano, she has written in the field of postcolonial studies, on the relationships between literature, history and society in subsaharan Africa and the emergence of new, creolized literary expressions in the West and elsewhere. In recent years she has researched and published on the role of cultural museums in contemporary society.

Adele D’Arcangelo is associate professor at the University of Bologna since 2015. She carries out research in the field of English Language and Translation. Her interests include literary and theatrical translation, editorial policies and translation teaching. She currently focuses her research on the themes of intercultural competence in translation teaching and on popular literature and editorial policies.

  • Organizzato da: Italian Institute of Culture in Edinburgh