Books
x dismiss this message

Did you know you can edit this page?

see page history

Description edit see section history

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization --... read more

Summary edit see section history

When Leonardo Vetra, a CERN physicist is murdered with an "Illuminati" symbol seared on his chest, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is sent to investigate. Vittoria Vetra, Leonardo Vetra's adopted daughter reveals that she and her father had been studying the newly discovered power of... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

When Leonardo Vetra, a CERN physicist is murdered with an "Illuminati" symbol seared on his chest, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is sent to investigate. Vittoria Vetra, Leonardo Vetra's adopted daughter reveals that she and her father had been studying the newly discovered power of antimatter. They find that the antimatter canister is stolen, taken to Vatican City, and will explode after 24 hours. Langdon and Vittoria fly to Vatican city to search for the canister of antimatter, prevent the murders of the Preferiti, and stop the Illuminati from destroying Vatican City.

Characters edit see section history

  • Robert Langdon: A professor of symbology at Harvard, he is the main protagonist of the story. Langdon is sent to CERN to investigate the murder of Leonardo Vetra, and then flown to Vatican city for the search of antimatter. Robert Langdon is very intelligent and good at problem solving, he usually wears chinos, a turtleneck, and a tweed jacket. He also owns a Mickey Mouse watch.
  • Vittoria Vetra: The adopted daughter of the physicist and priest Leonardo Vetra.She is Italian, has black hair, and is tall. She also works at CERN for Bio Entanglement Physics, and she invented the canister for the antimatter. Vittoria accompanied Robert Langdon on his trip to Vatican City.
  • Leonardo Vetra: A priest and a scientist working at CERN. He is the adoptive father of Vittoria, and is murdered by the Assassin while researching antimatter. He has resolved that science and religion can coexist.
  • Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: The camerlengo of Vatican City, he was raised by his mother Maria, an ex-nun. He was told that his father was in heaven.
  • Hassassin: The killer hired by Janus, the face of the Illuminati. He is middle eastern and hates Christianity in all forms. He is also a sexual predator.
  • Gunther Glick: Journalist for BBC. Contacted by the Hassassin regarding the events happening in the Vatican.
  • Maximilian Kohler: The director of CERN (Centre for European Nuclear Research). Disabled from waist down, he uses a computerized wheelchair to move around. He contacts Robert Langdon after he finds Leonardo Vetra murdered.
  • Chinita Macri: Camerawoman, BBC. contacted by the Hassassin regarding the events happening in the Vatican.
  • Commander Olivetti: The commandant of the Swiss Guard. He is initially skeptical on the claims of Langdon and Vittoria until he talks with the Hassassin. He, along with other Swiss Guards, search desperately for the missing antimatter hidden somewhere at the Vatican.
  • Cardinal Baggia: The most preferred cardinal to be elected pope. He is one of the four preferiti and a Cardinal from Milan, Italy. He was drowned to death.
  • Robert Langdon: Robert Langdon is a character gifted with intelligence and the ability to handle hard situations. He is a respected celebrity but he is also funny and athlet.He is that kind of main character that knows what he does, no matter the situation, that can make up a plan in few minutes and always reach his goals.
  • Dr. Joseph Vanek: A renowned scholar that reporter Gunther Glick introduces live on BBC during an intense turn of events.
  • Bob Brownell: A gripping read.
  • Ekta Jain: Wonderful suspense novel though stretched a bit and repetitions of incidences increased number of pages for this book .
  • Dick: Add a description of this character.
  • Dr. Jacobus
  • Cardinal Guidera: One of the four preferiti and a cardinal from Barcelona. He was incinerated alive.
  • Cardinal Mortati: The most senior cardinal in the conclave, and the current Dean of the College of Cardinals. He was the Devil's Advocate for the late pope. His role becomes more prominent towards the very end of the book.
  • Wallace
  • Jaqui Tomaso
  • Cardinal Lamassé: One of the four Preferiti and a Cardinal from Paris. He was killed by punctures to his lungs, from which he bled to death.
  • Mother Maria
  • Cardinal Ebner: One of the four prefereiti and a Cardinal from Frankfurt, Germany. He was killed by asphyxiation. by means of putting soil and dirt into his mouth.
  • Sylvie Baudeloque
  • Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca: He was the Papal Chamberlain during the conclave.
  • St. Teresa
  • Lieutenant Chartrand: A young Swiss Guard
  • Captain Rocher: The second in command after Commander Olivetti
  • Vittoria Vetra: The adapted daughter of Leonardo Vetra. Like her father, she also works in CERN as a Scientist.
  • St. Francis
  • Leonardo Vetra: A scientist working in CERN. He was doing a research on antimatter when he was killed by the Assassin.
  • St. Peter
  • Maximilian Kohler: The director of CERN.
  • Elias Rocher
  • Vittoria Ve
  • Sono
  • Mr. Vetra
  • Alfa Romeo
  • Director Kohler
  • Dale Brown
  • Mr. Hitzrot
Show all 41 characters
Popular Covers

Loading covers…

Choose your book’s cover

Quotes edit see section history

  • “Leading us from temptation.”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • “One does not need to have cancer to analyze its symptoms.”
    Maximillian Kohler
  • “Science seems irrelevant. Science can heal or science can kill. It depends on the soul of the man using the science. It is that soul that interests me.”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • “A promise to God is the most important promise of all. Never break a promise to God.”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • “Tonight we change the world.”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • “Who is the God who offers his people power but no moral framework to tell you how to use that power? What kind of God gives a child fire but does not warn the child of its dangers?”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • “"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand."”
    Leonardo Vetra
  • “Have we become so spiritually bankrupt that we would rather believe in mathematical impossibility than in a power greater than us?”
    Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca
  • ““Whether or not you believe in God, you must believe this: when we as a species abandon our trust in a power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability. Faiths … all faiths … are admonitions that there is something we cannot understand, something to which we are accountable. With faith we are accountable to each other, to ourselves, and to a higher truth."”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.”
    Highlighted by 273 Kindle customers
  • “Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us.”
    Highlighted by 208 Kindle customers
  • Remembrance was a Buddhist philosopher’s trick. Rather than asking her mind to search for a solution to a potentially impossible challenge, Vittoria asked her mind simply to remember it. The presupposition that one once knew the answer created the mindset that the answer must exist . . . thus eliminating the crippling conception of hopelessness.
    Highlighted by 203 Kindle customers
  • “Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.”
    Highlighted by 201 Kindle customers
  • Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”
    Highlighted by 185 Kindle customers
  • Each of us is a God, Buddha had said. Each of us knows all.We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.
    Highlighted by 153 Kindle customers
  • “Concisely put. Quite simply, the goal of terrorism is to create terror and fear. Fear undermines faith in the establishment. It weakens the enemy from within . . . causing unrest in the masses. Write this down. Terrorism is not an expression of rage. Terrorism is a political weapon. Remove a government’s façade of infallibility, and you remove its people’s faith.”
    Highlighted by 141 Kindle customers
  • “Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories . . . legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God’s hand?”
    Highlighted by 137 Kindle customers
  • SCIENCE AND RELIGION ARE NOT AT ODDS. SCIENCE IS SIMPLY TOO YOUNG TO UNDERSTAND.
    Highlighted by 106 Kindle customers
  • ekuaba from Ghana, a gold cross from Spain, a cycladic idol from the Aegean, and even a rare woven boccus from Borneo, a young warrior’s symbol of perpetual youth.
    Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers
Show all 19 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

  • Vatican City: Religious place for Catholics, home to St. Peter's Square and the Vatican Archives.
  • Rome: Capital of Italy
  • CERN: Scientific reserch lab in Europe

Organizations edit see section history

  • The Illuminati: An ancient secret organization run by scientists, including Galileo and Bertolli. The Catholic church banned them because of their radical thoughts about religion and science. To find their secret lair people need to follow the clues and find the four churches of illumination, technically the "Path of Illumination."
  • The Opus Dei: Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the governance of a prelate (bishop) appointed by the pope.
  • CERN: A scientific organisation based in Europe.

First Sentence edit see section history

Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.

Table of Contents edit see section history

The chapters don't have their own titles, being just a numbered sequence from 1 to 137.

Glossary edit see section history

  • Antimatter: the most powerful energy source known to man.
  • Ambigram: a typographical design or artform that can be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Chalice: Religious symbolism.
  • Opposites: Science vs. Religion, matter vs. anti-matter.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 4 in Robert Langdon. (standard series)

Followed by The Da Vinci Code.

This is book 15 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 5 of 9 in Publishers Weekly Bestselling Novels In 2004. (authoritative list)
This is book 15 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 15 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 15 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 15 of 99 in NPR's Top 100 Killer Thriller. (community list)
This is book 4 of 30 in Top selling 100 books 1998-2010 (Guardian). (authoritative list)
This is book 38 of 121 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2012). (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Dan Brown (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Atria Books
Country: United States
Publication Date: May, 2000
ISBN: 0671027352
Page Count: 572

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3552.R685434 A82
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Lots of complex ideas and some gruesome scenes. Suitable for adults and mature teenagers. Little profanity.

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Da Vinci Code
  • The Ninth Orphan
  • The Witches' Hammer
  • The Oxford Deception
  • The Templar Legacy
  • The Fall

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Illuminating Angels & Demons

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Da Vinci Code

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Lost Symbol

We’re hiding the errata, awards, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.