THE DA VINCI CODE AUTHOR DAN BROWN CALLS MANILA "GATES OF HELL" IN NEW NOVEL

A report by ABS-CBNNews.com’s Ira Pedrasa reveals that American author Dan Brown, who shot to fame with The Da Vinci Code, not only tagged Manila as a place of "six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, horrifying sex trade," but also called the city “the gates of hell” in his latest novel, Inferno. The novel is said to be Brown’s take on Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

The report explained that in Inferno—the fourth part in Harvard art professor Robert Langdon’s adventures—one of the characters went to the Philippines "for a mission to supposedly feed poor fishermen and farmers on the countryside." One of the novel's characters, Dr. Sienna Brooks expected the Philippines to be a “wonderland of geological beauty, with vibrant seabeds and dazzling plains.” The poverty she saw when she landed in Manila, however, made her "gape in horror."

The report went on to elaborate that Inferno depicts Brooks’ experiences in Manila as so traumatizing that she "left the Philippines at once, without even saying goodbye to the other members of the group."