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The Lost Symbol
The Lost Symbol
AuthorDan Brown
LanguageEnglish
GenreCrime, Mystery, Thriller novel
PublisherDoubleday (US)
Transworld (UK)
Publication dateSeptember 15, 2009
Publication placeUnited States
United Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardcover), eBook, audio book
Pages528
ISBN9780385504225 (US) 9780593054277 (UK) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Preceded byThe Da Vinci Code 

The Lost Symbol is a 2009 novel by American writer Dan Brown. It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C., after the events of The Da Vinci Code.

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. 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. It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction for the first six weeks of its release, and has remained near the top since then.

Plot

The story focuses on Freemasonry, and takes place over a period of 12 hours in Washington, D.C. Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture in National Statuary Hall 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. However, when Langdon arrives at the Capitol, instead of an audience for his lecture, he finds the severed right hand of Peter Solomon, tattooed and positioned as a recreation of the Hand of the Mysteries, and pointing straight upwards to the fresco The Apotheosis of Washington on the inside of the Capitol dome. Solomon has been kidnapped by a man named Mal'akh, who demands that Langdon unlock the Ancient Mysteries in return for Solomon's life. This leads to a game of cat and mouse throughout the museums and architecture of Washington. Langdon joins forces with Solomon's sister, Katherine, a researcher studying noetic theory in a laboratory in the Smithsonian Museum Support Center. Langdon and Katherine are pursued by both Mal'akh, and Inoue Sato, the head of the CIA's Office of Security. Sato confronted Langdon, whom she believed had knowledge into a matter of national security. It is later revealed that her investigation was sparked by Mal'akh's threat to release a clandestine video of Washington powerbrokers engaged in a Masonic ritual. The chase and the clues to the puzzles lead through the sub-basement of the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Freedom Plaza, the United States Botanical Garden, and Washington National Cathedral. The clues center around a small stone unfinished pyramid, and a capstone that was entrusted several years ago by Solomon to Langdon. The pyramid and the box which holds it reveal several puzzles, involving a Masonic cipher, a circumpunct, an alchemical formula, and references to the 1514 engraving Melencolia I.

The House of the Temple is the setting for the prologue and the climax of The Lost Symbol.

Mal'akh captures Katherine and Langdon, tortures Langdon by putting him in a isolation tank and filling it with a breathable liquid, and then takes Peter Solomon to the top floor of the Masonic headquarters House of the Temple. Langdon and Katherine Solomon are rescued by the CIA, while Mal'akh reveals to Peter Solomon that he is in fact Peter's own son, Zachary.

As a young man, he had been unhappy with the way he had been treated by his father, so he faked his own death in a Turkish prison. He then experienced a religious epiphany, finding the need to learn the The Lost Word (the verbum significatium or lost symbol of the title).

Mal'akh plans to complete his transformation into a godlike being by inscribing his scalp with what he mistakenly believes to be the symbol for the Ancient Mysteries, the circumpunct.

Trying to recreate the Biblical story of Abraham on the verge of sacrificing his son, Zachary attempts to goad his father into killing him with Abraham's sacrificial Akedah knife on the altar of the Freemasons. But Langdon intrudes, and a CIA helicopter interrupts the data connection with a targeted EMP to prevent the distribution of the video. Zachary is killed when the helicopter accidentally shatters a skylight above him, and the falling shards pierce his body.

Peter Solomon then takes Langdon to the Washington Monument, which when viewed from above, is a dot in a circular plaza, or a circumpunct. Peter tells him that The Word that Mal'akh was seeking was in all holy books such as the Bible, Qur'an, and Bhagavad Gita. The Ancient Mystery is the realization that people are not God's subjects, but in fact possess the ability to be gods themselves. Langdon realizes that the lost symbol is God, standing for limitless human potential and was previously only found by studying holy scriptures such as the Bible, Qur'an, Torah, Vedas and such.

Cast

  • Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist, Protagonist
  • Mal'akh
  • Peter Solomon, Smithsonian secretary, billionaire, Freemason, Langdon's closest friend
  • Katherine Solomon, Noetic scientist, sister of Peter Solomon
  • Isabel Solomon, mother of Peter and Katherine Solomon, grandmother of Zachary Solomon
  • Trish Dunne, Peter and Katherine Solomon's assistant
  • Mark Zoubianis, hacker and friend of Trish
  • Warren Bellamy, Architect of the Capitol, and Freemason
  • Inoue Sato, Director of CIA's Office of Security
  • Nola Kaye, CIA analyst
  • Rick Parrish, CIA security specialist
  • Turner Simkins, CIA field operations leader
  • Reverend Colin Galloway, Dean of Washington National Cathedral, and Freemason
  • Trent Anderson, Capitol police chief
  • Alfonso Nuñez, Capitol security guard
  • Jonas Faukman, New York editor (named for Brown's real-life editor, Jason Kaufman)
  • Officer Paige Montgomery, an officer from a private security company
  • Agent Hartmann, CIA field agent

Release

The Lost Symbol had been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date was pushed back multiple times. 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. 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. Electronic versions such as eBook and Audible book versions were also made available on the same date.

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. 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. On its first day the book became the #1 bestseller on Amazon.com, 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. The Lost Symbol also ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon's Canadian and British sites. Both Barnes & Noble and Waterstone's reported the book has broken all previous records for adult fiction in the United Kingdom. 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.

By September 25 the book ranked #1 in the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

Reception

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. Los Angeles Times said, "Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias." 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?" 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. The Daily Telegraph said the novel was "not quite the literary train-wreck expected." 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." 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". The digested read by John Crace in The Guardian ends with Robert Langdon begging Dan Brown "Please don't wheel me out again."

Adaptations

The book is expected to be made into a film by Columbia Pictures, for release in 2012. In February 2010, it was confirmed that Columbia Pictures will be making the film, which will find Robert Langdon being summoned to Washington, D.C., where he will be decoding the symbols of the Freemasons. Tom Hanks is expected to reprise his role as Langdon. Brian Grazer and John Calley have signed on to produce the third installment, while it has not been confirmed if Ron Howard will return to direct. Also Columbia Pictures asked to writer Steven Knight to write the script.

See also

References

  1. ^ Italie, Hillel (2009-04-20). "New Dan Brown novel coming in September". Associated Press. Retrieved 2009-04-20. Cite error: The named reference "Bookseller1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ Carbone, Gina (2009-04-20). "Dan Brown announces new book, 'The Lost Symbol'". Boston Herald. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  3. "ET Breaks News: Dan Brown Has Finished New Book" ETonline, February 12, 2009
  4. ^ "Dan Brown's 'Lost Symbol' Sells 1 Million Copies in the First Day". The New York Times. 2009-09-16. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
  5. ^ "Best Sellers: Hardcover Fiction". New York Times. 2009-09-25. Retrieved 2009-09-26.
  6. "Best Sellers: Hardcover Fiction". New York Times. 2009-11-20. Retrieved 2009-11-25.
  7. "Keys to Dan Brown's Solomon Key". Retrieved 2008-12-20.
  8. De Vera, Ruel S. (September 15, 2009). "Dan Brown's 'Lost' is no 'Da Vinci Code'". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved September 14, 2009.
  9. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown, pub. Doubleday, 2009 page 418
  10. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown, Doubleday, 2009 pp. 424, 444, 459
  11. Brown, page 445
  12. Brown, page 509
  13. Burstein, Dan (2009). "Exploring the complex cosmos of The Lost Symbol". Secrets of the Lost Symbol: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code Sequel. Harper Collins. pp. 3–48. ISBN 9780061964954. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
  14. "Dan Brown returns with Da Vinci Code sequel, The Lost Symbol". The Guardian. 2009-01-20. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  15. "New Dan Brown book offers industry hope". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2009-04-21. Retrieved 2009-04-21.
  16. "A New World: Scheduling E-Books". New York Times. 2009-07-15. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  17. "Dan Brown moves to Washington for new thriller". Reuters. 2009-07-08. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  18. "The Lost Symbol eBook (Kindle Version)". Amazon.com. 2009-08-17. Retrieved 2009-08-19.
  19. "Download The Lost Symbol - Preorder". audible.com. 2009-09-12. Retrieved 2009-09-12.
  20. Irvine, Chris (September 14, 2009). "Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol 'will be biggest selling adult fiction novel of the decade'". The Telegraph. Retrieved September 14, 2009.
  21. . Associated Press. September 23, 2009 http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/09/23/2009-09-23_clinton_book_record_beaten_by_da_vinci_scribe_brown.html. Retrieved September 23, 2009. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  22. Amazon's Bestsellers in Books (accessdate 2009-09-16)
  23. "Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol on Kindle is Amazon top seller". The Daily Telegraph. 2009-09-16. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
  24. Amazon.ca Bestsellers in Books (accessdate 2009-09-16)
  25. Amazon.co.uk Bestsellers in Books (accessdate 2009-09-16)
  26. "To No One's Surprise, Dan Brown Books Are Flying Off Bookshelves". The New York Times. 2009-09-15. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  27. "Dan Brown's Lost Symbol sets adult fiction sales record". The Guardian. 2009-09-17. Retrieved 2009-09-17.
  28. Stone, Philip (2009-09-22). "Dan Brown sells 550,000 in first week". theBookseller.com. Retrieved 2009-09-22.
  29. Maslin, Janet (2009-09-13). "Fasten Your Seat Belts, There's Code to Crack". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
  30. Owchar, Nick (September 14, 2009). "Book Review: 'The Lost Symbol'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 13, 2009.
  31. Jones, Malcolm (September 15, 2009). "Book Review: Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol'". Newsweek. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
  32. Wiersema, Robert (September 17, 2009). "Review: Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol". National Post. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
  33. Jehu, Jeremy (September 15, 2009). "Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, review". The Telegraph. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
  34. Grossman, Lev (September 15, 2009). "How Good Is Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol?". TIME. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
  35. Sutcliffe, William (September 19, 2009). "The Lost Symbol". Financial Times. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
  36. Crace, John (September 22, 2009). "Digested read: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown". The Guardian. Retrieved September 24, 2009. {{cite news}}: Text "Books" ignored (help); Text "John Crace" ignored (help); Text "The Guardian" ignored (help)
  37. "Columbia moves on 'Symbol'". Variety.com. 2009-04-20. Retrieved 2009-09-01.
  38. "The Mystery of Dan Brown". The Guardian. September 2009. Retrieved September 22, 2009.
  39. "Columbia finds 'Symbol'; Knight to adapt third book in 'Da Vinci Code' series". Variety. Reed Business Information. February 3, 2010. Retrieved February 4, 2010.

Further reading

External links

Template:Robert Langdon's Novels

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