Angels and demons by Dan Brown

Innholdsfortegnelse
About the author
Short summary
Structure
Point of view
The setting
Characters
Theme

Utdrag
About the author:
On June 22, 1964, Dan Brown was born in the United States, specifically in the small city of Exeter, New Hampshire.

He was raised in a household where science and religion held equal importance due to his father's status as a Presidential Award winning math professor and his mother's profession as a Christian musician.

It's possible that this upbringing influenced Brown's literary works, including "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code."

After graduating from Philips Exeter Academy in 1982, Brown initially pursued a career in songwriting in Hollywood, but soon realized it wasn't his passion.

He then decided to study art history in Seville. In 1993, he returned to his hometown and was employed as a literature teacher at his former school.

Teaching literature and analyzing books and novels likely aided in preparing him for his own writing career.

A particular experience at the school inspired him to write his first thriller, which led to the publication of "Digital Fortress" in 1996.

Following that, he wrote "Deception Point" and "Angels and Demons" before publishing his most renowned novel, "The Da Vinci Code," in 2003.

The book had an astounding first-day sale of 6,000 copies and went on to sell over 12 million copies worldwide by the end of 2004.

Short summary:
At the early hour of 5 o'clock in the morning, Robert Langdon, a renowned professor in religious symbology, is abruptly awoken by a message from Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN, a European institution dedicated to particle research.

Kohler reveals the devastating news that one of CERN's most distinguished scientists, Leonardo Vetra, has been brutally murdered.

Kohler even sends Langdon a graphic image of the victim's naked, lifeless body contorted in an unsettling manner. The corpse bears a mysterious symbol carved into its chest.

To Langdon's shock, he recognizes the symbol immediately as belonging to an ancient cult called the Illuminati.

This symbol is an ambigram, which reads the same way upside down. Kohler pleads for Langdon's assistance, and within a mere 90 minutes, Langdon arrives at CERN after a breakneck flight in the experimental aircraft, Boeing X-33.

Upon arrival, Langdon meets with Kohler and receives a swift tour of CERN as he is guided to the site of Vetra's murder in his own laboratory.

Before long, Vetra's daughter Vittoria joins them, who is also a scientist. She provides them with a lecture on their most recent discovery in the creation of antimatter, an exceedingly unstable substance that can cause catastrophic explosions upon contact with matter.

Together, the trio descends to Vetra's private research facility to uncover the mysteries surrounding his murder.