By: Momina Abrar Rashid

BESE-4

SEECS, NUST

Review: INFERNO
I love books, they were like food for me, necessary for survival and I am a huge Dan Brown fan. I have
read all his books and deeply admire his work. When I likened books to my food, I used past tense. It
was intentional. Ever since starting University, sleep is my only food. I just cannot fit reading into my
schedule. And it’s not that I am not trying, I am, very hard. I am the kind of person whose one reason for
love of winters was oversized hoodies in which she could smuggle books to the bathroom to read them
because she had annuals just round the corner and her mother wanted her to study for them only. I am
telling you all this so you can know the agony I went through when Dan Brown’s latest thriller Inferno
was released and I had to wait for months to read it. Months. Some out there must be feeling me.

Anyways, I lay in my bed (double and not the hostel’s meager single bed), cuddled in my quilt, with a
mug of hot chocolate on my side table and a pack of nuts on my bed and set out on the adventure which
is Inferno along with Robert Langdon. The book started with the signature Dan Brown Prologue and the
book looked promising. The novel has all the typical Dan Brown features. A sudden crisis, 24-48 hour
time frame, ancient symbols, art, poetry and Europe; except the ending. Also, I found it a bit similar to
his last novel, The Lost Symbol.

The story begins with Robert Langdon waking up in a hospital in Florence, with a head wound caused by
a bullet, suffering from retrograde amnesia. He is surprised to find himself in Florence when he is
attacked again by a woman. He escapes with the help of a pretty doctor with a blond ponytail and an IQ
of 208. And so the adventure begins. Every chapter wove perfectly like thread, and the result is a very
finely woven story. The story is a bit dragging initially. It gets interesting by the end. This is the Dan
Brown book I took longest to read, four days. Otherwise with the exception of The Lost Symbol for
which I took three days, I have read the rest in 24 hours because I just could not leave them. They had
me hooked. This one sadly didn’t. At least in the beginning.

So, there is a biochemist, Bertrand Zobrist, who is concerned about the sudden population explosion
that has engulfed the world and believes that the humans are on the brink of extinction. He is a fan of
Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet who is famous for his epic poem Inferno, in which he describes his
descent to hell, its nine rings, ground zero where he meets Satan and where gravity is reversed and then
his ascend to heaven. This poem inspired and affected many in his time and even now because of the
vivid and gruesome picture of hell he painted with his words. It also inspired Zobrist greatly. Zobrist
approaches many influential people with his concern and is made an outcast in the scientific world and
the WHO declares him wanted. With the entire world, except a few who share his view, against him
Zobrist still manages to create something which he believes is the only solution to this problem. WHO
then hires Langdon to help them understand the clues Zobrist has left to prevent the impending disaster
before it’s too late. It is a matter of life and death as Dr. Sinskey of WHO tells Langdon.

Whether it is too late or not, that you’ll have to find for yourself along with many other things. Let me
tell you this though, this book has an ending you would never have expected. Happy reading 

Meanwhile, I start And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Husseini. I have little time to the end of
semester break. Ciao.