This novel follows Robert Tagliaferro, an orphan of ambiguous racial and ethnic identity, who has returned to his hometown of Utica, New York, searching the bin of memory for something to salvage. Rich in literary heritage and allusion, The Music of the Inferno is an unusual, deft, often, piercing meditation on storytelling, ethnicity, and the Italian American experience.

Raised in Utica, New York, Frank Lentricchia is Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of Literature at Duke University. He is the author of a number of scholarly works, including After the New Criticism, Criticism and Social Change, and Modernist Quartet, and has written for numerous magazines, including Harper's, Lingua Franca, and the London Review of Books. His previous novels are Johnny Critelli and The Knifemen, and he has also written a memoir, The Edge of Night.