Short Stories Inspired by Dante's Inferno by J.F. Penn
A Thousand Fiendish Angels
Three dark short stories inspired by Dante's Inferno, linked by a book of human skin passed down through generations.
Three linked stories descend through Dante's hell, thirty years apart.
A police officer finds a dead author tattooed with words of blood, and beneath a ruined chapel, a book that grants every desire for one small price.
Estranged twins follow their grandfather's map to an Arctic cavern of ice and diamonds.
And in a walled city ruled by a man they call The Minotaur, a fighter crosses the wasteland to save her sister before sundown.
Three generations. One book bound in human skin.
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The research behind the book
The thousand fiendish angels of Canto VIII
The title comes straight from Dante's Inferno, where fallen angels scream from the gates of Dis at a living man who dares walk among the dead.
Dis, city of the damned
In the Inferno, the walled city of Dis encloses lower Hell. The third story rebuilds it as a post-apocalyptic fortress ruled by a man they call The Minotaur.
Books bound in human skin
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is documented history, with confirmed examples in libraries today.
William Blake's Circle of the Lustful
Blake's watercolour of lovers swept into a whirling vortex illustrates Dante's second circle. A print of it hangs at the first story's crime scene.
Ariadne and the Minotaur
In the myth, Ariadne gave Theseus the thread to kill the Minotaur. Here Ariadne enters the labyrinth of Dis herself, and needs no Theseus.