"Hell and Back" offers a wide range of wonderfully challenging, always provocative reflections on literature and the art of writing. The lead essay on Dante sets the tone for the entire collection: erudite, contemplative, witty, and meticulous, it constantly offers new insights in The Inferno, that most celebrated of all poems. Mixing biographical background with astute literary detection, Parks writes also of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Henry Green, Salman Rushdie, Jose Saramago, Christina Stead, Giovanni Verga, and a dozen others. His essay on the art of translation--he is, among other things, an eminent translator from the Italian--is simply masterful.