The Dante Club

An epic poem over seven centuries old might not seem like the stuff of a gripping literary plot. But Matthew Pearl pulls it off. A fan of the Italian writer—and himself winner of the Dante Award from the Dante Club of America—he turned his intense academic interest into a thriller that topped the New York Times list in its first week of release. A critical and commercial success, it has already been translated into more than thirty languages. The Dante Club blends real events—there really was a Dante Club frequented by lovers of Italian literature, including Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes—with a noir plot replete with twists and cultural references. In this ambitious debut novel, Matthew Pearl combines historical and literary icons with complex psychological themes, amidst a masterful period reconstruction. In post-Civil War Boston, a group of intellectuals dedicate themselves to translating into English one of humanity's most important works: The Divine Comedy. To this end, writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, along with editor J.T. Fields, form the Dante Club. They expected conservatives to resist the publication of such a work, but they didn't count on a serial killer capable of anything to recreate the book's worst scenes. They must discover who he is and who his next victim is. The conflicts behind this endeavor are the driving force behind the plot, born from a bet. Matthew's law professor at Yale warned him that after graduation, he would be unable to write fiction. The result is a novel with a gripping plot. In The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl manages to transform the results of historical research into a brilliantly constructed thriller.