The System of Dante's Hell is a short novel by African American writer LeRoi Jones

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

, published in 1965 by Grove Press

Grove Press

Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...

. The novel follows a young black man living nomadically in big cities and small towns in the southern United States

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

, and his struggles with segregation

Racial segregation in the United States

Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...

 and racism. The book correlates the man's experience with Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri's epic poem Divine Comedy.Dante's Inferno may also refer to:* Dante's Inferno , a silent film about a slum landlord sent to hell...

, and includes a diagram of the fictional hell described by Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

.