THE DANTE CLUB About the Book

Go to Inferno Edition

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER
A #1 CLEV. PLAIN-DEALER BESTSELLER
A #1 BORDERS BESTSELLER
A #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER IN SPAIN
30 WEEKS USA TODAY BESTSELLER
A BOOKSENSE BESTSELLER
NATIONAL COLLEGE CAMPUS BESTSELLER
A WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER
US News & World Report: Best Books.
NYPL: Books to Remember.
A Booksense 76 Selection.
Booklist: Top 10 Historical Fiction.
Library Journ.: season's Best 1st Novels.
A People Magazine Page-Turner.
A Borders Original Voices Selection.
Borders: Best Mysteries/Thrillers of the Year.

1865 Boston, a small group of literary geniuses puts the finishing touches on America’s first translation of The Divine Comedy and prepares to unveil the remarkable visions of Dante to the New World. The powerful old guard of Harvard College wants to keep Dante out—believing that the infiltration of such foreign superstitions onto our bookshelves would prove as corrupting as the foreign immigrants invading Boston harbor. The members of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J. T. Fields —endure the intimidation of their fellow Boston Brahmins for a sacred literary cause, an endeavor that has sustained Longfellow in the hellish aftermath of his wife’s tragic death by fire.

But the plans of the Dante Club come to a screeching halt when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only the members of the Dante Club realize that the style and form of the killings are stolen directly from Dante’s Inferno and its singular account of Hell’s punishments. With the police baffled, lives endangered and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find a way to stop the killer.

The brunt of the burden falls to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose unique literacy in both poetry and medicine continues to pull him into the center of the struggle. An outcast policeman, Nicholas Rey, the first and only black member of the Boston police department, places his future on the line after discovering the secrets of the Dante Club. Together, they find the key to the murders where they least expect it: closer than they could have imagined.

The debut novel and New York Times Bestseller, International Bestseller and Booksense 76 selection hailed by Esquire as "audacious and captivating" and by The Boston Globe as "a preternaturally accomplished book as wise as it is entertaining." Chosen by New York Public Library as one of 2003's 25 Books to Remember

Published in America, Canada, Holland, Germany, France (also French Canada) (interview), Japan, Italy (articles), Sweden, Spain (review) (also in Catalan translation), Greece (review), Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, Chile, Korea, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Portugal, Israel, Brazil, Poland, Russia, China, Thailand, Tawain, Malaysia, Indonesia, Romania, Denmark (review), Iceland, Finland, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Phillipines, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom (review), Australia (review) and New Zealand (click on underlined countries to see cover art and further information). Also available as an audio book and an UK audio book. TO SEE A GALLERY OF DANTE CLUB BOOK COVERS CLICK HERE.

TO READ MORE REVIEWS CLICK HERE.

"This first-rate thriller breathes such life into the genre that the term "thrilling" genuinely applies. Matthew Pearl succeeds not only with a deft and elegant plot, but delivers an eloquent and quirky message for our times about the value of literary heroes. To this end, in THE DANTE CLUB we are privileged to meet the most unlikely quartet of literary sleuths we are likely ever to encounter."

Gregory Maguire, highly acclaimed author of
Wicked and Lost

"A fascinating, erudite and highly entertaining account of a remarkable moment in American literary history."

Iain Pears, best-selling author of
An Instance of the Fingerpost

"THE DANTE CLUB is pure pleasure for the reader, magnificently informed without being stuffy, gripping without being merely sensational. I particularly enjoyed the nice, easy swing of its pacing. This book can be savored."

Peter Straub, best-selling author of
Ghost Story and (with Stephen King) Black House

"In THE DANTE CLUB, Matthew Pearl expertly combines rollicking entertainment with serious insights about Civil War-era America. The book is fun, smart, and enviably audacious."

Darin Strauss, award-winning author of
Chang & Eng and The Real McCoy

"Thoroughly accomplished… Matthew Pearl does a marvelous job of evoking the period and making it come alive with finely drawn characters and an ingenious story."

David Liss, Edgar Award winning author of
A Conspiracy of Paper

Also see DANTE'S INFERNO a translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; edited by Matthew Pearl with an introduction by Lino Pertile.