Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Inferno
First edition cover
Author

Dan Brown

Country

United States
United Kingdom

Language

English

Series

Robert Langdon #4

Genre

Mystery, Detective fiction, Conspiracy fiction, Thriller

Publisher

Doubleday

Publication date May 14, 2013

Media type

Print, e-book

Pages

480 pages

ISBN

978-0-385-53785-8

OCLC Number

824723329

Preceded by

The Lost Symbol

[1]

Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by renowned American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert
Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.[2] The book was released on
May 14, 2013 by Doubleday.[3] It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction and
Combined Print & E-book fiction for the first ten weeks of its release, and also remained on the list of E-book fiction
for the first thirteen weeks of its release.

Plot
Harvard University professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital with a head wound and no memory of the last
few days. His last memory is walking on the Harvard campus, but he quickly realizes that he is now in Florence.
Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him, tells him he suffered a concussion from being grazed by a bullet
and had stumbled into the emergency ward. Suddenly, Vayentha, a female assassin who has been following Robert,
breaks into the hospital, shoots the doctor in charge of Robert's care, and approaches Robert's room. Sienna grabs
Robert and they flee to her apartment.
After Sienna recounts the details of his admission to hospital, Robert finds a cylinder with a biohazard sign in his
jacket and decides to call the U.S. consulate. He is told that they are searching for him and want his location. Per
Sienna's guidance, Robert gives them a location across the street from Sienna's apartment to avoid getting Sienna
more involved in his mysterious situation than she already is. Soon, Robert sees an armed Vayentha pull up to the
location Robert gave the consulate. At this point Sienna and Robert believe the U.S. government wants to kill him.
Robert decides to open the container and finds a small medieval bone cylinder fitted with a hi-tech projector that
displays a modified version of Botticelli's Map of Hell. At the bottom of the illumination are the words "The truth
can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death." Suddenly, soldiers raid Sienna's building; Sienna and Robert
narrowly escape.

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

2
Robert and Sienna head toward the Old City, believing the cylinder must have
something to do with Dante. However, they find that Florentine police and
Carabinieri officers have sealed the bridges and are searching for them. They
run into a construction site near the Boboli Gardens where Robert illuminates
the modified "Map of Hell" again, notices that individual letters, which
collectively spell "CATROVACER," have been added to each of the ten
layers of the Malebolge, and that the layers have been rearranged. Moving
them back to the order in the original Botticelli "Map of Hell" yields the
words "CERCA TROVA". Robert recognizes these are the same words on the
painting The Battle of Marciano by Vasari, located in the Palazzo Vecchio.
Robert and Sienna manage to evade the soldiers and get into the Old City
using the Vasari Corridor.

Robert stands in front of The Battle of Marciano trying to figure out where to
go next by connecting the "eyes of death" phrase in the modified "Map of
Hell" with his location. A custodian sees Robert snooping around and gets the director of the museum in the Palazzo
Vecchio, Marta Alvarez. Marta recognizes Robert, having met him and Ignazio Busoni, the director of Il Duomo, the
previous night. She leads Robert and Sienna up a set of stairs by The Battle of Marciano, and Robert realizes the top
of the stairs is on the same level as the words "cerca trova" in the The Battle of Marciano painting. Marta tells Robert
that she showed them Dante's death mask the previous night, which sits in a room down the hall from the Battle of
Marciano painting. Robert realizes he is retracing his own steps from the previous night. Marta takes Robert and
Sienna to the mask who find that it's gone. They look at security footage and see Robert himself and Ignazio stealing
the mask. The museum guards turn on Robert and Sienna. At this moment, Marta calls Ignazio's office to question
him but is greeted by his secretary, who informs Marta that Ignazio died of a heart attack the other night but left a
message for Robert moments before he died. Ignazio's secretary asks to speak with Robert and plays to him Ignazio's
message. In it Ignazio esoterically tells Robert where the mask is hidden, referring to "Paradise 25."
Palazzo Vecchio of Florence

Robert and Sienna escape the guards, but the soldiers arrive. They cross the
attic over the Apotheosis of Cosimo I, where Sienna pushes Vayentha to her
death. Robert connects the phrase "Paradise 25" to the Florence Baptistry,
where he and Sienna find the Dante mask along with a riddle from its current
owner, a billionaire geneticist named Bertrand Zobrist. A man named
Jonathan Ferris, with a large bruise on his chest which he hides from the two,
claiming to be from the World Health Organization (WHO), comes and helps
them escape the soldiers. They follow the riddle to Venice, where Jonathan
suddenly falls unconscious. Robert is captured by a group of black-clad
soldiers while Sienna escapes.
Robert is taken to Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the WHO, and is
given an explanation of what is going on: Zobrist, who committed suicide the
week before, was a mad scientist and Dante fanatic who has supposedly
developed a new biological plague that will kill off a large portion of the
world's population in order to quickly solve the problem of the world's
Gates of Paradise at Florence Baptistery
impending overpopulation. Elizabeth raided Zobrist's safe deposit box, found
the cylinder, and flew Robert to Florence to follow the clues. However,
Robert stopped communicating with Elizabeth after meeting with Marta and Ignazio, and the WHO feared he
betrayed them and was working with Zobrist to unleash the plague. The soldiers were the WHO's emergency
response team and never meant to kill Robert.

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Zobrist had paid a shadowy consulting group called The Consortium to protect the cylinder until a certain date.
When Elizabeth took it away, they were obligated to protect whatever the bone cylinder pointed to. They kidnapped
Robert after the meeting with Marta and Ignazio, but Robert hadn't yet solved the whole riddle. They gave Robert
benzodiazepine drugs to erase his short-term memory, created a fake head wound, and staged every event up to this
point so that Robert would be motivated to solve it. Sienna, Vayentha, and Jonathan are all actors working for The
Consortium; the call to the U.S. consulate was also staged. The leader of The Consortium, having become aware of
the bioterrorism plot, has agreed to cooperate with the WHO.
Sienna goes rogue, and The Consortium realizes she was a secret
supporter and lover of Zobrist. She learned where the plague is
being kept after Robert solved the riddle and acquires a private jet
to get to it before everyone else. Robert, the WHO, and The
Consortium team up to stop her by going to the riddle's actual
location: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where Enrico Dandolo is
buried. Robert and the others find the plague is in the Cistern, but
discover that Sienna is already there. The bag that held the plague
had already been broken for an entire week, spreading through the
outer world via visiting tourists. Sienna runs out of the Cistern
yelling something in Turkish, which causes panic among the
tourists who stampede out into the city.
It is discovered Sienna didn't puncture the bag; it was water
soluble and had dissolved one week previously in the Cistern
waters, meaning that the whole world has already been infected. It
is also discovered that Sienna was trying to stop the virus herself,
but didn't trust the WHO because samples of the virus would
certainly find their way into the hands of governments performing
weapons research. The leader of The Consortium tries to escape
WHO custody with help from disguised underlings, but is caught
later by Turkish police. It is implied that The Consortium will be
investigated and ruined. Sienna receives amnesty in exchange for
working with the WHO to address the crisis, since she is a medical
doctor and transhumanist writer.

Tomb of Enrico Dandolo, at the Hagia Sophia.

Inside Basilica Cistern, with water below and tourists

above.

The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification
to cause sterility in 1/3 of humans. Even with future generic engineering technology, changing the human genome
back would be hazardous. The human race, therefore, has been forced into a new age.

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Characters
Robert Langdon: A professor of symbology at Harvard University and the protagonist of the novel.
Bertrand Zobrist: The main antagonist of the novel despite not appearing physically because of his suicide prior
the events of the novel and appearing only in flashbacks of other characters. A genius scientist and a madman
who is obsessed with Dante's Inferno, he is intent on solving the world's overpopulation problem by releasing a
virus.
Felicity Sienna Brooks/FS-2080: A doctor and Zobrist's former lover. She also worked for The Consortium. She
helps Langdon find the virus Zobrist created, but her past relationship with Zobrist makes her loyalty to Langdon
suspicious until the end of the novel. She was a loyal disciple of Zobrist until she reads his last letter and decided
to get his new technology before it can fall into the wrong hands. She believes the World Health Organization will
cooperate with other government agencies to use Zobrist's new virus for weapons. She uses The Consortium and
Robert to follow the Map of Hell and get to ground zero before everyone else, but she realizes that Zobrist had set
off a futile search as he released his virus well beforehand.
Elizabeth Sinskey: The head of the World Health Organization who hires Langdon to find Zobrist's virus.
Consortium's provost: The head of The Consortium and the secondary antagonist. He tries to accomplish
Zobrist's wishes by securing the location of the virus from Langdon and Sinskey and to divulge a video Zobrist
made before his death to the media. When he learns that he was helping Zobrist in a bioterrorist attack, he helps
the World Health Organization to find the cure despite being arrested at the end of the novel.
Vayentha: The Consortium's agent in Florence with orders to follow Langdon. She is killed by Sienna in the
Palazzo Vecchio.
Christoph Brder: Head of the SRS team (part of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) who
is ordered by Sinskey to find Langdon after she lost contact with him.
Marta Alvarez: An employee in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence who assists Langdon with Dante's death mask. She
is pregnant with her first child.
Ignazio Busoni/il Dumino: The director of Il Duomo in Florence who assists Langdon with Dante's death mask.
He succumbs to a heart attack prior to the events of the novel.
Jonathan Ferris: An agent of The Consortium who pretends to be in league with the World Health Organization.
He used fake eyebrows and a mustache to pretend to be Dr. Marconi at the beginning of the novel.
Ettore Vio: The curator of St. Mark's basilica in Venice.
Mirsat: A guide of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The Association for Research into Crimes against Art

A real organization, The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art [4], and its blog [5], is mentioned in the
novel. In chapter 72, Robert Langdon uses the ARCA [4] website to check the history of the Four Horses of the
Basilica San Marco, and is startled by the passage:
"The decorative collars were added to the horses' necks in 1204 by the Venetians to conceal where the heads had
been severed to facilitate their transportation by ship from Constantinople to Venice."[6]
This passage is taken from a series of four articles [7] discussing the long and tumultuous history of the Four Horses
of the Basilica San Marco, the art work with the longest history of crimes against it, written by Judge Arthur
Tompkins. Judge Tompkins is an ARCA trustee and faculty member, who teaches a course on Art Crimes in War as
part of ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program [8], and he includes detailed discussion of the Four Horses as part
of his course.

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Marketing
Brown released the book's title on his website on January 15, 2013,[9] after prompting readers to help reveal a digital
mosaic using social media posts,[10] and revealed the cover in late February 2013.[11] The cover depicts the famous
Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore located in Florence, Italy. He also published the first chapter of Inferno along with
a free ebook of The Da Vinci Code on March 17. The ebook was distributed for free to readers worldwide through
online e-book stores like Amazon, Google Play and Barnes & Noble until March 24, 2013. Transworld publishers,
the official UK publisher of Dan Brown books, have also released the official book trailer through YouTube.
Inferno has been translated into French, Turkish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish,
Norwegian, Swedish and Danish for simultaneous release. The publishers hired a team of 11 translators who worked
on the project at the headquarters of Mondadori in Milan between February and April 2012. They were reportedly
sequestered in a basement, and worked intensively under strict security and secrecy.
Inferno has been also translated into Persian by Afraz Publication, 3 months after first publishing. [12]

Reception
Inferno received mixed reviews from critics. The New York Times praised the book as being "jampacked with tricks"
and said that Langdon is on "one of those book-length scavenger hunts that Mr. Brown creates so energetically" []
The New York Daily News reviewed the book favorably, calling it a book of "harrowing fun threaded with coded
messages, art history, science, and imminent doom."[] Other reviews were more negative. James Kidd of The
Independent panned Brown's awkward prose but expressed approval of the book's plot, writing: "Brown's fusion of
gothic hyperbole with a pedant's tour-guide deliberately restrains the imagination through its awkward awfulness."[]
The Boston Globes Chuck Leddy compared the book favorably to Brown's previous works, and deemed it "the kind
of satisfying escapist read that summers were made for."[] Samra Amir of The Express Tribune was critical of the
novel's predictability and malapropism, but noted that "Browns art reigns over boredom. He manages to keep the
reader glued."[] Writing for The Guardian, Peter Conrad dismissed the book's content as "conspiratorial farrago" and
further elaborated: "Inferno is also dreadful, abounding in malapropisms and solecisms, leaden restatements of the
obvious and naive disinformation about the reality outside the bat-thronged belfry that is Brown's head."[]

Commercial performance
Inferno initially sold 369,000 copies at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan. It debuted as the #1 bestselling book
in the USA and was also atop the UK's book charts in its first week in shops, selling 228,961 copies. Dan Brown's
Inferno [13] remained #1 on Nielsen BookScan for the week ending May 26, selling 211,000 copies and bringing its
two-week total to 580,000. Despite slipping 42% in its second week, Inferno far outpaced the #2 book, Khaled
Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed, which posted a debut of 91,000 copies.

Film
Sony Pictures has dated a film adaptation to be released on December 18, 2015 with Ron Howard as director, David
Koepp adapting the screenplay and Tom Hanks reprising his role as Robert Langdon.[14]

Astronomical reference
How could Dante, writing in the very early 1300s, know about a constellation first seen by the Venetian explorer
Alvise Cadamosto, who noted it while sailing off the African coast in 1455, and more precisely described by later
navigators: Amerigo Vespucci (who saw the constellation as an almond, Mandorla) in his voyages to South America
in 1499 to 1502, and later by Ferdinand Magellan, who sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1519 to 1522?
Mandelbaum, in the Notes accompanying his translation of the Divine Comedy, interprets Dante's "first people" as

Inferno (Dan Brown novel)

Adam and Eve and speculates that Dante suggests that they could see the "four stars" of the cross until they were
expelled from Eden to the Northern Hemisphere, from which the constellation can't be seen. Cornelius' explanation
of precession seems more likely to be true, since astronomers have shown that precessionthe gradual "wobble" of
Earth's axis of rotation, with a period of about 26,000 yearsdoes change the apparent positions of stars in the
heaven as observed over centuries. It is known that because of this gradual shift of Earth's orientation in space as it
rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun, the ancient Greeks could see the constellation of Crux above the
horizon, describing it as a kite (Jay M. Pasachoff and D. H. Menzel, Stars and Planets, Houghton Mifflin, 1997,
p.144)[15]

References
[1]
[4]
[5]
[6]

http:/ / worldcat. org/ oclc/ 824723329

http:/ / www. artcrimeresearch. org
http:/ / www. art-crime. blogspot. com
Brown, Dan. "Inferno." Bantam: 2013. Pg 318. Citations were removed from the text of the blogpost; the quoted passage is from Simon
Houpt's "The Museum of the Missing" (2006).
[7] http:/ / art-crime. blogspot. it/ 2011/ 06/ judge-arthur-tompkins-on-four-horses-of. html
[8] http:/ / www. artcrimeresearch. org/ postgraduate-certificate-program
[12] Walker, Tim (7 May 2013) "Real Inferno for Dan Brown translators who toil in underground bunker to decode his latest book" (http:/ /
www. independent. co. uk/ arts-entertainment/ books/ news/
real-inferno-for-dan-brown-translators-who-toil-in-underground-bunker-to-decode-his-latest-book-8604095. html). The Independent
[13] http:/ / www. sibooksan. com/ pdf/ inferno-dan-brown-pdf. html

External links
Official website (http://www.danbrown.com/inferno/)
An Inferno guide with places, artworks, history and people mentioned in the book (http://www.inferno-guide.
net/prologue/) (French)
An Illustrated Guide to the Florence and Venice of Dan Brown's Inferno (http://www.scribd.com/doc/
150456276/The-Florence-and-Venice-of-Dan-Brown-s-Inferno-An-illustrated-Guide)

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Inferno (Dan Brown novel) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=571058020 Contributors: 121beanfrappe, 2A02:9A0:7:1381:D1B5:49FB:627D:1F61, Aimtompkins, Allenshere,
Arjayay, Artifice, Batman194, Bgwhite, Black Yoshi, Bonkers The Clown, Captain Assassin!, CusperBoomer, Dawn Bard, EEMIV, Ewigekrieg, Fadesga, Feldkurat Katz, Freshh, Geniac,
GinaJay, GorillaWarfare, Gounc123, Greengreengreenred, Grbergs Gra Sng, Haukilahti, J.A.R. Huygebaert, Janus Savimbi, Jaqen, Jeppiz, Jp4gs, Kao713, Kguirnela, Lemaroto, Mile47,
Mongol, Mwaldeck, Nightscream, Ohconfucius, Prisonermonkeys, Qwerty Binary, Rahulbadami, Reatlas, Reywas92, Rfr28264, Richard BB, Rlendog, Robert The Rebuilder, Rudolf sonora,
Scriberius, Skizzik, SoWhy, Stephen, Swap17il, Tbeyer, Tokyogirl79, TommasoIntini, TonyTheTiger, Tschild, Udarsha45, Waspmartell, Widr, Wzrd1, Zaher kadour, 171 anonymous edits

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