Dante’s Paradiso

With the publication of “Dante’s Paradiso,” Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders complete their literary and artistic achievementthe retelling of “The Divine Comedy” in contemporary words and images. Hailed as “inspired” by the “The London Review of Books,” Birk and Sanders’s adaptation of Dante’s classic work is true to the spirit of the original and is as acerbic and shockingly funny today as in thirteenth-century Italy. With a text that incorporates modern slang and references to anachronistically recent public figures, Birk and Sanders pay tribute to Dante’s linguistic approach and clever politics. Birk’s striking spin on Gustave Dore’s famous engravings accompany the cantos. Together they lend the timeless poem a postmodern edge. A major retrospective of all of Birk’s illustrations and paintings for the trilogy will be held at the San Jose Museum of Art in August 2005 in tribute to a masterpiece for our times.