Antinferni is a collection of poetry and prose by three contemporary authors (Umberto Fiori, Claudio Recalcati and Michele Mari), with illustrations by Roberto Recchioni. Both the poetry and the prose keep a deliberate distance from the traditional idea of eternal fire and the abandoning of reason, staying close instead to a contemporary and more personal world inspired by cruelty , sickness and commonplace dreams.
A routine afterlife makes an appearance in the poetry of Umberto Fiori, populated by corpses unaware they are dead. The hell of the hospital ward is suddenly revealed to the narrator in the poems of Claudio Recalcati. Michele Mari’s prose embraces a classic hell through the dreams of adolescent Corrado Marlenghi, which superimpose the history of thirteenth century Italy and references to Dante’s Inferno with clashes with his classmates.
A limited series of 800 numbered copies of Antinferni has been printed to mark “I Giovedì alla Fondazione” at the Fondazione Pomodoro in Milan.