Inferno
Dan Brown, 2013
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fictionHistorical fiction
A Harvard symbologist wakes in a Florence hospital with two days missing, a killer outside, and a trail hidden in Dante's hell. It moves at a brisk thriller pace, mixing Florence calm with memory fog and grim, satirical dread.
Feels like serenity and dread. About memory and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy puzzle-driven crime novels that weave art and history into a chase. Be aware that the Dante material and hellish imagery can be graphic, and Langdon's amnesia setup keeps the first stretch deliberately disorienting.
Why read it
It offers a quick, puzzle-filled tour of Florence and Dante's afterlife, useful if you want a thriller that makes you look up the poem's circles.
A page from the book
The geography of a nightmare, mapped in blood and bodies.
Langdon took a step toward the river, but he could see the waters were bloodred and too deep to traverse. When Langdon raised his eyes again to the veiled woman, the bodies at her feet had multiplied. There were hundreds of them now, maybe thousands, some still alive, writhing in agony, dying unthinkable deaths . . . consumed by fire, buried in feces, devouring one another. He could hear the mournful cries of human suffering echoing across the water. Dan Brown.Dan Brown's Inferno borrows its title and architecture from Dante's Divine Comedy; the poem's nine circles and contrapasso punishments shadow the novel's Florence.
Books that feel like this
More by Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown, 2003
A symbologist is pulled into a murder, a cipher hunt and a centuries-old secret hidden in plain sight across Paris and London.
Angels & Demons
Dan Brown, 2000
A Harvard symbologist is pulled from his bed into one night of pursuit beneath Rome, where a corpse is branded with a sign only he can read.
The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown, 2009
A symbologist is summoned to Washington for a lecture and pulled into one night of Masonic codes, hidden monuments and a missing mentor.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Inferno for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy puzzle-driven crime novels that weave art and history into a chase. Be aware that the Dante material and hellish imagery can be graphic, and Langdon's amnesia setup keeps the first stretch deliberately disorienting.
- What is Inferno like?
- It moves at a brisk thriller pace, mixing Florence calm with memory fog and grim, satirical dread. Feels like serenity and dread. About memory and power.
- What should I read after Inferno?
- If you liked Inferno, try American Dirt (Jeanine Cummins), Under the Dome (Stephen King) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson).
A taste of the feed
What trauma does to a mind that finally stops moving.
Trauma waits for stillness. Lydia feels like a cracked egg, and she doesn’t know if she’s the shell or the yolk or the white. She is scrambled.
American Dirt · Jeanine Cummins
The moment care turns into a kind of ownership.
Denial gives way to acceptance; acceptance breeds dependence. Anyone who’s ever cared for a terminal patient will tell you that, too. Sick people need someone who will bring them their pills and glasses of cold sweet juice to wash them down with. They need someone to soothe their aching joints with arnica gel. They need someone to sit with them when the night is dark and the hours stretch out. They need someone to say, Sleep now, it will be better in the morning. I’m here, so sleep. Sleep now. Sleep and let me take care of everything.
Under the Dome · Stephen King
What a wall of forty-three pressed flowers can tell you that the police never could.
After putting down the telephone the eighty-two-year-old birthday boy sat for a long time looking at the pretty but meaningless flower whose name he did not yet know. Then he looked up at the wall above his desk. There hung forty-three pressed flowers in their frames. Four rows of ten, and one at the bottom with four. In the top row one was missing from the ninth slot. Desert Snow would be number forty-four.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo · Stieg Larsson
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