Inferno by Dan Brown — Review
on Book Review
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. — Dan Brown, Inferno
Dante’s Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, maneuver by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. The poem portrays Hell as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth. It’s the “realm … of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen”.
The Mappa dell’Inferno (Map of Hell) by Botticelli illustrates The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Strange is the artwork, so is the death mask of its inspirational poet.
But why am I discussing these artifacts? Because they’re the crux in Dan Brown’s brand new book Inferno!!
The story starts with the protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology, waking in a hospital in Florence, Italy with Retrograde Amnesia. He sees La voragine dell’Inferno and a female figure telling him, “seek, and ye shall find” in his blurred visions. But why does he have such visions and, more importantly, the question is what he is doing in Florence? As the story progresses, the events unfold, the crucial one of which I’ll say the answers to the above questions… With the killer on the move, more than a dozen unknown people, and his own government trying to kill him, he for sure has trust issues.
Luckily he’s accompanied by beautiful Sienna, a Doctor by profession. Together they discover that Robert has a container with a biohazard symbol. That container is a High Tech device displaying the modified version of Botticelli’s Map of Hell, based on Dante’s Inferno. And there you go, the quest for truth follows…
Further down the line, they discover about Bertrand Zobrist, A transhumanist genius scientist who is obsessed with Dante’s Inferno. He targets the main issue of human overpopulation, which is, by far means, is increasing at an exponential rate. He proposes to WHO his intent of solving this problem by releasing a virus. But due to obvious reasons, they deny and put him on red alert. He manages to go into hiding to improvise on his idea of a virus to save the world from the apocalypse. But the terror that strikes by his suicide and his equally suicidal video is beyond words. So there begins a quest, a quest to save the world. Will they, or they did not succeed in their attempt, just kidding, of course, they would XD…
Anyway, I appreciate Dan Brown’s work and his intense reference to historical artifacts. It’s just so wonderful how he blends them so well. It’s always fun reading his work…