It is similar in concepts and ideas to Dan Brown's THE DA VINCI CODE but is a more enjoyable read. Along the way, Ottavia slowly begins to lose her faith and fall in love with Farag, which conflicts with her vows as a nun.Īs such then, the book is not just a quest to reach earthly paradise, but also a love story. Each time they have to work out where to go, and what to do by deciphering the clues from Dante's book, and after each success they are branded by some unknown person with a cross, just like those found on the body discovered at the start of the story. This entails going to seven different cities to purge themselves, one by one, of the seven deadly sins, one in each city. Despite the apparent dangerous nature of this quest, the three decide to follow the clues in 'Purgatory' together to find the earthly paradise.
MATILDE ASENSI HOW TO
Kasper claims that Dante found the earthly paradise, was himself a Staurofilake, and betrayed his brothers by writing down in 'Purgatory' how to find the earthly paradise, for which he was killed. Remarkably, the directions seem to be written down in another book, the well known 'Purgatory', which is part of the DIVINE COMEDY, written by Dante and published in 1315, shortly after the last entry in the codex. Farag Boswell, a Coptic from Egypt who speaks many languages, is an archeologist and has an Italian mother, join forces to discover where the earthly paradise is. Ottavia, Kasper and a third person, Prof. Is their theft linked to the book? Where is the earthly paradise? Is that where the thieves are? How can they find it? In the present day, it seems that holy relics, fragments of the true cross, have been gradually going missing from many Catholic churches around the world. These protectors of the true cross are known as 'Staurofilakes'. The codex ends at the start of the 13th century, when the last Cato writes about saving the 'true cross' or Lignum Crucis and making their way to an 'earthly paradise', the whereabouts of which are unknown.
MATILDE ASENSI SERIES
Ottavia's involvement then seems to come to an end until she is summoned back to help decipher a book, or codex, written by a series of monks who each call themselves 'Cato', that Kasper has taken from a monastery that is the source of one of the crosses. Eventually they work out that the symbols spell the word 'Stauros', and the crosses are those from different churches and monasteries around Europe. She is asked to work alongside a Swiss guard, Kasper Glauser-Roist, to solve the mystery. Besides being a nun, Ottavia also has a doctorate in palaeography and art history and works in the Vatican classified archives. The discovery of a body decorated with seven crosses and strange symbols leads to Ottavia, a nun in the Vatican, being asked to help decipher their meaning. As engrossing as it is intelligent, this just might be the next big book in the burgeoning religious thriller subgenre.Asensi, Matilde - 'The Last Cato' (translated by Pamela Carmell) Some of the conjecture seems far-fetched, but the research is impeccable, and the behind-the-scenes Vatican life feels utterly authentic. Salina and a couple companions set off, with Dante as their guide, on a rollicking, round-the-world adventure. Turns out that Dante was a member of the order himself, and that the notoriously dense Divine Comedy is a kind of coded guidebook to the order’s rituals. The key to tracking them down? Dante’s Divine Comedy. Ottavia Salina, a nun working as a paleographer at the Vatican, is asked to decipher tattoos on the dead body of an ‘enemy of the Church’ from Ethiopia, she soon discovers the deceased was tied up with the Staurofilakes, an ancient order who have sought to protect the True Cross and now seem to be stealing slivers of it from around the world. Sound familiar? The Last Cato will inevitably draw comparisons to The Da Vinci Code, but this book is in many ways more compelling, if a bit less accessible.
Asensi’s first novel to be published in English features a clandestine religious organization, a code contained in the work of a long-dead genius, a plucky heroine, and just the right combination of obscure history and plausible conjecture.
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