With characteristic humor, author Randy Boyagoda reflects on the physicality of hiking as depicted by Dante in the Divine Comedy—compared with his own, less epic experiences on the trail. While touching on the topics of middle age, William Faulkner, and his aborted project to write “the hiker’s guide to Dante,” Boyagoda ultimately focuses on the principal lesson of the Florentine poet’s masterpiece: that even in our darkest moments, we’re not alone.

This chapbook is a hand-made, limited edition publication. Only 100 have been bound.

Praise for Randy Boyagoda

“Boyagoda writes with real panache and drive.” —Salman Rushdie

“A sharp and subtle writer.” —The Globe and Mail

“Boyagoda does more than offer clever satire—he humanizes… vast impersonal forces even as he imbues them with a moral complexity that frustrates easy political judgment.” —The Walrus

“The Evelyn Waugh of the North.” —Books-in-Canada

“Randy Boyagoda’s writing fills me with laughter, delight—and envy.” — Aravind Adiga, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger

“One of the best satirical writers today… immediately funny.” —The American Conservative

About the Author

Randy Boyagoda is the author of six books, including Original Prin and Dante’s Indiana. His novels have been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and named a Globe and Mail Best Book and New York Times Book Review Editors Choice selection. He contributes essays and reviews to several Canadian, American and British publications, appears frequently on CBC Radio, and hosts a literary podcast for the Toronto Public Library. A former President of PEN Canada, he is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and lives in the east end with his wife and four daughters.