The Dante Club

Matthew Pearl’s sensational hit, The Dante Club, is set to open Cal Rep’s Fifteenth Season. This New York Time’s bestseller, which combines gripping entertainment with serious insights about the effects of war, is a whodunit with a heart and a brain. Set among the lofty spires of nineteenth century Harvard College, four unlikely sleuths Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher J.T. Fields are intent on promoting the publication of Longfellow’s new English translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This erudite quest is brought to a screeching halt, however, when a series of gruesome murders erupts through Boston. Only the distinguished members of “The Dante Club” can intervene. They must leave the cocoon of academia and find a madman whom only they understand is utilizing Dante’s Inferno as inspiration for his horrific crimes.