| The Lost Symbol | |
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The Lost Symbol |
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| Author(s) | Dan Brown |
| Country | United States United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime, Mystery, Thriller |
| Publisher | Doubleday (US) Transworld (UK) |
| Publication date | September 15, 2009[1] |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback), eBook, audio book |
| Pages |
528 Hardcover 639 Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780385504225 (US) 9780593054277 (UK) |
| Preceded by | The Da Vinci Code |
The Lost Symbol is a 2009 novel by American writer Dan Brown.[2][3] It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C., after the events of The Da Vinci Code, and relies on Freemasonry for both its recurring theme and its major characters.[4]
Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's The Da Vinci Code.[2] It had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in Doubleday history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history.[5] It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction[6] for the first six weeks of its release, and remained there[7] until January 24 of the following year.
Contents |
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small, sealed package which he had entrusted to Langdon years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, he learns that the invitation he received was not from Solomon, but from Solomon's kidnapper, Mal'akh, who has left Solomon's severed right hand in the middle of the Capitol Rotunda in a recreation of the Hand of Mysteries. Mal'akh then contacts Langdon, charging him with finding both the Mason's Pyramid, which Masons believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C., and the Lost Word, lest Solomon be executed.
Langdon is then met by Trent Anderson, head of the Capitol police, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA's Office of Security. Examining Solomon's hand, they discover a clue leading them to a Solomon's Masonic altar in a room in the Capitol's sub-basement, where they find a small pyramid lacking a capstone, with an inscription carved into it.
Sato then confronts Langdon with the security x-ray taken of his bag when he entered the Capitol, which reveals a smaller pyramid in the package Langdon brought in response to the request by the kidnapper posing as Solomon. Because the package had been sealed for years, Langdon was unaware of its contents, but Sato, dissatisfied with this, attempts to take Langdon into custody. Before she can arrest him, however, she and Anderson are assaulted by Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, who then flees with Langdon during the melee.
Mal'akh is a Freemason with tattoos covering almost his entire body. He infiltrated the organization in order to obtain an ancient source of power,[8] which he believes Langdon can unlock for him in return for Peter's life. As Langdon deals with the events into which he has been thrust, Mal'akh destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter's younger sister, where she has conducted experiments in Noetic Science. Mal'akh is also being pursued by Sato in the interests of National Security.
Mal'akh captures Langdon and seriously injures Katherine Solomon. He places Langdon in a tank of breathable oxygenated liquid, from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid's base for Mal'akh, who then flees with Peter Solomon to the Temple Room of the Scottish Rite's House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine are eventually rescued by Sato and her staff who race to the House of the Temple where Mal'akh threatens to release a heavily edited video showing government officials performing secret Masonic rituals. Mal'akh, who turns out to be Peter's long-believed dead son, Zachary Solomon, forces the Word—the circumpunct—out of his father and tattoos it on his head on the last portion of unmarked skin on his body. Mal'akh then orders Peter to sacrifice him, as he believes that it is his destiny to become a demonic spirit and lead the forces of evil. Director Sato, however, arrives at the Temple in a helicopter, which smashes the Temple's overhead glass panel, the shards of which fatally impale Mal'akh. The CIA then thwart Mal'akh's plan to transmit the video to several leading media channels using an EMP blast, disabling a cell tower in the network path leading from Mal'akh's laptop computer.
Peter informs Langdon that the circumpunct Zachary tattooed on his head is not the Word. Deciding to take Langdon to the true secret behind the Word, Peter leads him to the room atop the Washington Monument and tells him that the Word—a common Christian Bible, the "Word of God"—lies in the Monument's cornerstone, buried in the ground beneath the Monument's staircase. Langdon realizes that the symbols on the pyramid's base spelled out the words Laus Deo which translate to Praise God. These words are inscribed upon the small aluminum capstone atop the Monument, which is the true Masonic Pyramid.
Peter tells Langdon that the Masons believe that the Bible is an esoteric allegory written by mankind, and that, like most religious texts around the globe, it contains veiled instructions for harnessing man's natural God-like qualities—similar to Katherine's Noetic research—and is not meant to be interpreted as the commands of an all-powerful deity. This interpretation has been lost amid centuries of scientific skepticism and fundamentalist zealotry. The Masons have (metaphorically) buried it, believing that, when the time is right, its rediscovering will usher in a new era of human enlightenment.
The Lost Symbol had been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date was pushed back multiple times.[1] When officially announced, the hardcopy book was on pre-order lists for months leading up to its release, being heavily ordered both in the United States and Canada.[13][14] The book was published on September 15, 2009 with an initial print run of 6.5 million copies, the largest first printing in publisher Random House's history.[15][16] Electronic versions such as eBook[17] and Audible book versions[18] were also made available on the same date.[19] The American release audio book was read by Paul Michael, who also performed the audio book for The Da Vinci Code.
The book immediately broke sales records, becoming the fastest selling adult-market novel in history, with over one million copies sold on the first day of release. By the end of the first week, a total of two million copies had been sold in the U.S., Canada, and UK.[20] According to the publisher, the rapid sales prompted the printing of an additional 600,000 hardcover copies to the 5 million initially printed for the US market.[5] On its first day the book became the #1 bestseller on Amazon.com,[21] and the Amazon Kindle e-reader edition became the top-selling item on Amazon.com, outselling Amazon's sales of the hardback copy of the novel, which is the sixth best selling book of 2009 on pre-publication orders alone.[22] The Lost Symbol also ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon's Canadian and British sites.[23][24] Both Barnes & Noble and Waterstone's reported the book has broken all previous records for adult fiction in the United Kingdom.[25][26] According to Nielsen BookScan data, 550,946 copies of The Lost Symbol were sold in its first week of sale, taking £4.6 million. By the end of the second sales week, Transworld intended to have 1.25 million copies printed.[27]
By September 25 the book ranked #1 in the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.[6]
The New York Times praised the book as being "impossible to put down" and claimed Brown is "bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead". Nevertheless, it noted the overuse of certain phrases and italics, as well as the lack of logic behind characters' motivations. It also likened one of the characters to Jar Jar Binks.[28] Los Angeles Times said, "Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias."[29] Newsweek called the book "contrived", saying that to get through The Lost Symbol, just like The Da Vinci Code, it was necessary to swallow a lot of coincidences, but the book was still a page-turner, and that Brown "is a maze maker who builds a puzzle and then walks you through it. His genius lies in uncovering odd facts and suppressed history, stirring them together into a complicated stew and then saying, what if?"[30] The National Post's review called it a "heavy-handed, clumsy thriller" and that the character of the villain (Mal'akh) "bears an uncomfortably close similarity" to the Francis Dolarhyde character in Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon.[31] The Daily Telegraph said the novel was "not quite the literary train-wreck expected."[32] TIME said the plot was fun, if bruising, but "It would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown's cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries — between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern — are actually extraordinarily messy."[33] Novelist William Sutcliffe's review in the Financial Times panned the book as "a novel that asks nothing of the reader, and gives the reader nothing back", adding that it "is filled with cliché, bombast, undigested research and pseudo-intellectual codswallop".[34] The digested read by John Crace in The Guardian ends with Robert Langdon begging Dan Brown "Please don't wheel me out again."[35]
Columbia Pictures is producing a film adaptation of the novel for a 2012 release.[36][37] Tom Hanks is expected to reprise his role as Langdon, and Brian Grazer and John Calley have signed on to produce the film, though it has not been confirmed if Ron Howard will return to direct. Steven Knight was asked to write the script,[38] but as of December 2010, he has been replaced by Brown, which will make the first time he has adapted one of his own novels into a screenplay.[39]
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