Not all people will appreciate all works or styles of art. Art is fundamentally subjective, and there is nothing wrong with not relating to a certain genre.

Life is far too short to waste time and energy trying to force yourself to engage with unappealing books. I would recommend moving on and spending your time with book styles that you like, or trying out genres with which you're not yet familiar.

I'm not by any means an expert, but I've read a few versions of Inferno. My favourite is easily the translation by Robert Pinsky, published in the late 90s.

He's a poet, as well as a translator, and he did an excellent job of capturing the essence of Inferno while making it much more accessible to a modern audience of more casual readers.

It would be a very nice thing to at least look at the book and bring that up to your father at some point. But if it's technical book and your father said he doesn't expect you to read it, then there doesn't seem to be a reason to try to finish it cover to cover. Book dedications are usually about recognition of people who are important to the author, they're not really about what's in the book itself.

I would ignore your professors, they're likely just putting themselves in your father's position and telling you to do what they'd want their kids to do.

When you reference ethnicity, are you thinking culture, or just skin colour?

For a hypothetical example, consider another knock-off Tolkienish fantasy novel with elves, dwarves, etc. in a setting similar to Tolkien's middle earth.

Would you consider this book inclusive if some of the characters, or the general populace, were described as having non-white skin colours? It would have the same general themes and background setting as Tolkien, the non-white characters wouldn't be different in any way beyond being described as having darker skin colour.

I was just about to post the same thing.

To the OP, the Foreigner series is long (9 books now, I think) and is literally all about character and character development over several years. Even the series title is a reference to the psychology of the main character.

CJ Cherryh has a very particular writing style and not everyone relates to it, but she's one of my favourite authors and I think this is her best series. I highly recommend giving it a try, at least checking out the first book. If you like it, there's lots of great reading awaiting you afterwards.