More controversial than Da Vinci Code?
It all started for Dan Brown whilst on holiday in Tahiti in 1993. Brown read Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy and was inspired to become a writer of thrillers. He immediately started work on Digital Fortress - a techno-thriller that explores the theme of government surveillance of electronically stored information.
Funnily enough, at this time he also tried his hand at comedy writing under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown"
187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman
He then went on to write Angels & Demons and Deception Point.
It wasn’t until his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code that he became a bestselling author, going on to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is now credited as being one of the most popular books of all time. This controversial mystery-detective novel follows symbolist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene. The novel is part of the exploration of alternative religious history, the central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. You will remember the furore the book created even though Brown emphasised that it was a work of fiction.
Once his infamy was established, Brown's next novel The Lost Symbol, was released in 2009 and on its first day the book sold over one million copies in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada.
Enter his latest instalment of the adventures of Robert Langdon. Inferno is said to be a Dante Alighieri-inspired novel and is already Amazon's top-selling book despite not being available until today.
Inferno has been shrouded in the kind of papal secrecy his character Robert Langdon battled against, with translators kept for weeks behind closed doors in the high-security basement at the Milan headquarters of Mondadori, (Italy's largest publishing firm) under strict confidentiality agreements. They were disallowed access to phones or notebooks! Security guards transported them in minibuses between their hotel and the bunker.
The only tantalising teaser we have is this:
He has promised that Inferno will be his "darkest novel yet," and he somewhat mysteriously dangled the fact that there's a "huge piece that we’re not talking about, that is secret and timely, that is really what is going to be most controversial part about the book."
Says Brown; “I’ve known for quite some time that I would write a book based on the Inferno. Having written Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, I’ve spent a lot of time researching Christian ideology and history.”
So what do you think the great controversy will be?
DSM