WHAT WAS LOST WILL BE FOUND...Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival, however, a disturbing object - gruesomely encoded with five symbols - is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is, he recognises, an ancient invitation, meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom. When Langdon's revered mentor, Peter Solomon - philanthropist and prominent mason - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of America's most historic city into the unseen chambers, temples and tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy, clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets and never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible and inconceivable truth. A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes, The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For, as Robert Langdon will discover, there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...
| ISBN | 059305427X | | Pages | 528 | | ISBN13 | 9780593054277
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 830 | | Publisher | Transworld Publishers Ltd | | Published in | London | | Imprint | Bantam Press | | Height (mm) | 239 | | Format | Hardback | | Width (mm) | 159 | | Publication date | 25 Apr 2009 | | Spine width (mm) | 47 | | DEWEY | 813.54 | | Academic level | General | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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'The wait is over. The Lost Symbol is here--and you don't have to be a Freemason to enjoy it...THRILLING AND ENTERTAINING, LIKE THE EXPERIENCE ON A ROLLER COASTER' - Los Angeles Times 'Dan Brown brings sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead...His code and clue-filled book is dense with exotica...amazing imagery...and the nonstop momentum that makes The Lost Symbol impossible to put down. SPLENDID...ANOTHER MIND-BLOWING ROBERT LANGDON STORY' - Janet Maslin, New York Times
As an English freemason, I noticed a number of the differences between English and American practice but it is very evident to me that Dan Brown does not, as is common amongst the ignorant, seek to ridicule freemasonry. Of course, this is a novel and it is the work of a fertile imagination but, unlike its predecessor, the underlying message is of the essential truth.
A substantial proporation of the American founding fathers were freemasons and there are certainly many elements in the design of Washington DC which bear witness. If Dan Brown had been English, he might well have mentioned that King George VI and Sir Winston Churchill were freemasons. The former was about to be installed as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England when his brother left him a more important job!
Reference might also be made to the King's inspirational Christmas broadcast in December 1939 which ended with the words - 'I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown, and he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way,' - not just a christian message from the Head of the Church of England, but one which could
inspire all who had faith in a single divine Creator.
Did the present Archbishop of Canturbury have this in mind when he stated that freemasonry is incmpatible with christinanity?
I fear that many who read this book may be disappointed; it does not have the sensationalism of its predecessor but where the seeds fall on fertile ground ... -
William Jowett
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