In news that has Oxfam shops the country over bracing themselves for impact, Doubleday has revealed details of the sixth novel by Dan Brown. Due for publication on May 14, Brown’s Inferno sees the return of his Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol protagonist, symbologist and fan of sensible yet casual trousers Robert Langdon. This time, Langdon will apparently be ‘drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces’, namely Deception Point Dante’s Inferno. Also, there will probably be Illuminati, Freemasons and/or Opus Dei. What a twist!

Quoth Brown: ‘Although I studied Dante’s Inferno as a student, it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante’s work on the modern world,’ adding ‘With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm […] a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways.’ Brown’s fellow fans of Italian culture will, of course, remember the secret passageway halfway through the fourth circle of Hell that let you skip over circles five and six and head right to the seventh.

Doubleday first announced the book’s publication without the title, instead asking fans of Brown to connect their social media profiles to Today.com through Facebook and with the Twitter hashtag #DanBrownTODAY, because according to Suzanne Herz at Doubleday ‘Dan Brown’s enthusiasm for puzzles, codes and symbols is a passion shared by his readers’, so I guess we’re changing the meaning of the world ‘puzzle’ now. Each connected profile picture became part of a mosaic on the Today site that eventually revealed the cover of the book and, as is generally the way with covers, the title too. If it strikes you as strange that readers of books which are generally so paranoid about shadowy movements doing world-shaping things without the knowledge or consent of the greater public are so willing to hand over photos of themselves to an anonymous source, well, yeah, it kind of is.