The Friday Face-Off is a meme originally created by Books by Proxy and now hosted over at Lynn’s Books. The idea is to compare the different covers of a book with each week being a certain theme.

This week’s Friday Face-Off theme is a cover depicting Hell: “The path to paradise begins in hell.” This week I have selected The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

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And the winner is… COVER D!

I’ve read Inferno, but never the entire collected work that forms The Divine Comedy. I’ve also visited – and fallen in love with – Florence, the birthplace of Dante. So it’s not surprising to imagine the amount of cultural references to his work and life in that spectacular city. Cover D struck me like so much of the classical artwork on display in the galleries and museums. The imagery of a devil dancing, capering on the suffering, tormented souls of the damned really speaks to what is at the heart of Inferno.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with my winner, or does one of the others work better for you? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s theme is a cover featuring robots: “Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”