The Diviner Comedy
Desmond O’Grady
The Diviner Comedy begins with a very pleasant conceit. Desmond O’Grady is an Australian journalist who has long written from Rome on matters to do with the Vatican and Italian life.
In this novel he imagines a journalist who shares his own background and also lives in Rome. By chance meets Dante Alighieri in his red crescent hat and 13th century dress. He brings him home and sets out to hear his version of his life. Their relationship is not easy: Dante is a sponger, drinks excessively, disappears into disreputable areas, hates Pope Boniface VIII and any monument to him with a passion, continually picks fights with anyone who does not share his own views of history, and resists all invitations to share his story.
The journalist’s fascination with Dante leads him to drive around the places in Rome and Italy that were part of Dante’s life, as well as travelling with him to Hollywood and Sydney. In his second coming Dante’s world expanded considerably, though his prejudices and his angers remain alive.
O’Grady is a knowledgeable guide both to the places visited in the novel and to their history. The Diviner Comedy will awaken an interest in the real Dante’s life and an appreciation of contemporary Roman society.
Readers may also appreciate the always precarious life of a journalist subject to the whims and the fashions of managers and editors but always trying to write well and truly.
AUSTRALIAN SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING
ISBN 9781922454423
This review first appeared in the Winter 2021 edition of Madonna magazine.