Fans of author Dan Brown seem to be biting their nails off in anticipation of his new fiction “Inferno”, scheduled for publication worldwide on May 14.
Robert Langdon, the lead character from Brown’s previous three thrillers, “The Da Vinci Code”, “Angels and Demons” and “The Lost Symbol” is returning in a new novel set in Florence and centered on a part of Italian poet Dante’s epic poem “Divine Comedy.”
Publishers Random House said there is “huge anticipation” in India for the new book, which will be published globally in hardcover, e-book and on audio CD.
“The book will be released in India simultaneously along with the rest of the world. There is huge anticipation in the US, UK, Australia and pretty much everywhere,” said Caroline Newbury, Random House Publishers India.
Brown’s previous book had received “incredibly good response” across the world according to the publishers who are anticipating a similar response to the new fiction.
The publishers have also initiated a nationwide campaign to prevent piracy or unauthorized reproduction of the book and protect legitimate sales.
“The Random House Group UK and Random House India have initiated a nationwide campaign and retained IPR lawyer Jyoti Taneja to protect legitimate sales,” said a statement.
The same lawyer was also retained during the release of Dan Brown’s previous book “The Lost Symbol”.
Social networking sites like Facebook and micro-blogging sites like Twitter witnessed excited chatter on the forthcoming book.
“Can’t wait to get my Kindle copy of Dan Brown’s Inferno tomorrow morning. It will be hard trying not to picture Robert Langdon as Tom Hanks,” read one post on Twitter.
Hollywood actor Tom Hanks has played Langdon’s character in 2006 adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code” followed by “Angels and Demons” in the year 2009. He is set to play the role again in the film adaptation of Brown’ last Langdon book “The Lost Symbol” reportedly in pre-production stage now.
Sites like Amazon and Flipkart are offering readers a chance to win a signed copy if they pre-book copies of the book.
“Kind of excited about the new Dan Brown release tomorrow #Inferno. Could do with a little conspiracy entertainment right about now,” read another tweet.
Many Twitter and Facebook posts referred to a very recent interview in a UK newspaper where the 48-year-old author talked about dealing with writer’s block by hanging himself upside down “strapping himself into a piece of gym equipment that can be turned upside down.”
In “Inferno” Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science.
Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust ... before the world is irrevocably altered.
“With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm... a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways,” Brown had earlier said in a statement.
Brown said he had studied Dante’s “Inferno” in high school, but “it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of his work on the modern world.”
In his typical characteristic love for codes, puzzles, symbols and embedded secrets, the author, seems to have some sort of hidden clue even in May 14, 2013, the date of the publication which turns out to be a mathematical anagram for 3.1415 an approximation of pi, a value associated with measuring circles. Dante had incidentally divided hell into circles.