Angels & Demons (2000)
Angels & Demons is a 2000 heparin book written by Dan Brown.
Symbologist Robert Langdon lands in Rome as the Catholic Church prepares to elect a new pope, and an ancient brotherhood, the Illuminati, resurfaces with a threat aimed at the Vatican itself. Dan Brown's first Langdon novel races across a single day and night through churches, archives, and hidden passages, decoding sculptures and inscriptions along the way. Antimatter, secret societies, and the old quarrel between faith and science drive the chase. It set the template Brown would reuse in The Da Vinci Code: art history as a series of locked doors, each opened by a clue.
Quick answers
What is Angels & Demons about?
Symbologist Robert Langdon lands in Rome as the Catholic Church prepares to elect a new pope, and an ancient brotherhood, the Illuminati, resurfaces with a threat aimed at the Vatican itself. Dan Brown's first Langdon novel races across a single day and night through churches, archives, and hidden passages, decoding sculptures and inscriptions along the way. Antimatter, secret societies, and the old quarrel between faith and science drive the chase. It set the template Brown would reuse in The Da Vinci Code: art history as a series of locked doors, each opened by a clue.
When was Angels & Demons published?
Angels & Demons was published in 2000.
Who made Angels & Demons?
Angels & Demons was written by Dan Brown.
Official site
Explore Angels & Demons guides
A few thoughts on Angels & Demons
Ron Howard's 2009 film adaptation puts Tom Hanks on the same race through Rome and the Vatican, a natural next stop. Readers hungry for more of Brown's symbol-hunting should follow Langdon into The Da Vinci Code, and gamers who like decoding Renaissance Italy will feel at home in Assassin's Creed II's Florence and Venice.
Secret orders hiding inside institutions everyone trusts
Angels & Demons sends Robert Langdon into a centuries-old brotherhood operating from inside the Catholic Church itself. The same setup drives The Da Vinci Code and its own film adaptation, plus Assassin's Creed II, where the Templars run Renaissance Italy from the shadows, and Mission: Impossible, where the real threat sits inside the agency Ethan Hunt is sworn to protect.
Lab experiments that spiral out of control and threaten everyone
Angels & Demons turns CERN's antimatter research into a bomb aimed at the Vatican, science built for good repurposed as an apocalypse. Frankenstein's creature is the original version of that warning, a creation that outstrips its maker's control. Cell turns a tech signal into a mind-erasing plague, Resident Evil: Death Island unleashes a lab virus on a city, and 9 shows what's left after a war machine finishes the job.