The Dante Club: A Novel

ISBN: 0812971043

Author: Pearl, Matthew

Condition: New

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Before The Dante Chamber, there was The Dante Club: an ingenious thriller that . . . brings Dante Alighieris Inferno to vivid, even unsettling life.-The Boston GlobeWith intricate plots, classical themes, and erudite characters . . . whats not to love?-Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code and OriginBoston, 1865. The literary geniuses of the Dante Club-poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields-are finishing Americas first translation of The Divine Comedy. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing the infiltration of foreign superstitions to be as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor.But as the members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modeled on the descriptions of Hells punishments from Dantes Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dantes literary future in the New World at stake, the members of the Dante Club must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret.Praise for The Dante ClubIngenious . . . [Matthew Pearl] keeps this mystery sparkling with erudition.-Janet Maslin, The New York TimesNot just a page-turner but a beguiling look at the U.S. in an era when elites shaped the course of learning and publishing. With this story of the Dante Clubs own descent into hell, Mr. Pearls book will delight the Dante novice and expert alike.-The Wall Street Journal[Pearl] ably meshes the . . . literary analysis with a suspenseful plot and in the process humanizes the historical figures. . . . A divine mystery.-People (Page-turner of the Week)An erudite and entertaining account of Dantes violent entrance into the American canon.-Los Angeles TimesA hell of a first novel . . . The Dante Club delivers in spades. . . . Pearl has crafted a work that maintains interest and drips with nineteenth-century atmospherics.-San Francisco Chronicle