The Mysteries Behind Dan Brown's Inferno

Cover for the Simon and Schuster US edition of Michael Haag's Inferno Decoded. Click on the image to enlarge.

Inferno Decoded, set for publication in Britain on 18 June, is an exploration of the infernal world of Dante and Dan Brown.  Following in the footsteps of Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology, as he tries to decrypt clues from Dante's Divine Comedy, the book joins the chase from Florence to Venice and to Istanbul, and covers everything along the way, from the Black Death to transhumanism, from the Renaissance to esoteric knowledge.

Inferno Decoded examines codes, symbols, numerology, the Templars, paganism and the heretical and erotic undercurrents of the times, and it tells the strange stories of Beatrice, the love of Dante's life, of Botticelli's Map of Hell, and of the Bonfire of the Vanities and other burnings, including very nearly the burning of Dante himself.

And it weighs the argument advanced in Dan Brown's Inferno, that it would be no bad thing if the human race were culled.

Inferno Decoded will also be published in the United States, and the Italian, French, Brazilian-Portuguese, Estonian, Chinese and Japanese language rights have been sold.

Profile Books British edition cover. Click on the image to enlarge.