When I read Eric Segal’s ‘Acts of Faith’ the first time, I had very little idea about Judaism and Jewish customs. Those were days when I had not yet resorted to searching Wikipedia and other sites for every single thing. And rather than read a treatise on the religion itself, the book gave some insight on one of the oldest religions of the world. It remains one of my favourite novels of all times.
Years later, I came across the 2003 novel Dante’s Equation by Jane Jenson and read about the book before reading the book itself. The back-cover told me that the novel had equal parts science, science fiction and Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). My curiosity was piqued. I had been reading way too many legal thrillers and murder mysteries and people had started noticing a manic gleam in my eyes recently and I decided to turn a new leaf for a change! The name ‘Dante’ in the title only made my interest stronger. A year back I read a novel called ‘The Dante Club’ by Matthew Pearl and found it a great read. And so I started reading this novel.
The first half of ‘Dante’s Equation’ has 4 parallel threads. Similar to ‘Acts of Faith’, chapter titles refer to the main character of the thread.
a. Denton Wyle - A playboy reporter who works for a magazine called ‘Mysterious World’ in LA. As the name suggests, the magazine runs stories on mysterious occurrences throughout the world. At the time the novel starts, Denton is working on an article on mysterious disappearances all over the world, since he has witnessed one of his brother when he was a child. Denton Wyle is described as a shallow and selfish person who cannot be called a hero in any respect.
b. Aharon Handalman - A rabbi (Jewish priest) and Torah scholar who believes that the Torah has hidden codes in the form of arrays. He is working on identifying recurring patterns and key-words in the Torah to determine secret messages if any with his assistant/student.
c. Jill Talcott, Nate Andros - Dr. Jill Alcott is a physicist who thinks she has made the discovery of a lifetime, by way of discovering a new wave that is capable of altering the surroundings. Her assistant/student Nate is dedicated and is smitten by her but Jill pretends to not notice.
d. Calder Farris - The mandatory villain of the novel. A cold-blooded mercenary working for the US Department of Defense, his primary responsibility is to identify and bring to notice of DoD, advancements in weapons technology from non-mainstream sources like scientists.
Denton Wyle hears about the disappearance of a Jewish physicist called Yosef Kobinski in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland during the Holocaust. He also chances upon a few pages of manuscript of a book titled ‘The book of torment’ that Kobinski wrote while in the concentration camp. He goes in search of the remaining pages of the manuscript to understand the reason behind Kobinski’s disappearance.
Rabbi Handalman comes upon quite a few references of Kobinski in the arrays in Torah. Along side the physicist’s name also occur other ominous words like weapon, destruction etc. Rabbi decides to investigate and ends up going to Washington to meet with Jill Talcott.
Jill Talcott and Nate realize that they have discovered something significant after running successful tests with the wave generator. They name the wave one-minus-one. The wave apparently seems to affect the surroundings and Jill surmises that it is because the wave disturbs the fabric of space and time.
Calder Farris finds that Jill Talcott has hit upon something that could possibly be used as a weapon and goes to meet with her. Meanwhile, while increasing the frequency of the wave, Jill falls sick and leaves the lab and the lab is burnt due to a furnace blast in the building.
Rabbi Handalman shows her the pages of Kobinski’s manuscript that he has managed to trace and shows the mathematical equations that Kobinski had written in the manuscript. Apparently Kobinski had already arrived at the wave equation. According to his theory, the wave alters the good or evil quality of a person.
As it usually happens in many movies, all the protogonists of the story end up in Auschwitz and disappear through the black hole. Depending on the nature of the person, they end up in different universes and/or galaxies.
Here onwards, the novel becomes a bit too bizarre for my taste. But that is probably because I do not enjoy fantasies much (LOTR being a rare exception). However, like every good Hollywood/Indian masala movie, all is well that ends well and all of them return to Earth. And even better every character has changed for the better.
The first half of the book is a real page-turner with action happening throughout. I liked the way Jensen linked wave theory and Jewish beliefs. Although multiple threads of narrative run in parallel, clarity is not lost. The characters were all well-etched and fully rounded, i.e., no perfect guy or no rotten-to-the-core guy.
The second half was very well written too, except that I frequently lost interest. For some reason books/movies on aliens, alternate universes etc. have never been of interest to me. In all the books/movies on aliens, human beings tend to project themselves on to the alien’s physiology, mind-set etc. and the limitation of such imagination shows. Aliens are described to be minor variations of a human being, with a torso, upper and lower limbs, all the sense organs etc. It is the same case here. The planets were different - multiple suns, different gravitational forces, different types of animals (still quadrupeds), different ‘languages’ but the aliens were still humanoids!! (I had the same gripe with Avatar too!). But to be fair to the author, she manages to create unique universes and people and troubles and keeps up the pace here too.
The idea of choosing a well-known event in the past, i.e., the Holocaust to represent total evil and thus one of the possible places for the ‘black hole’ was great. It was also interesting that there are many Jewish who believe that the Torah holds many encrypted messages and prophesies and have devoted their lives to its study.
So is this great literature? By no measure !! But it is definitely a good read. A much better piece of fiction than, say, Dan Brown’s best-seller ‘The Da Vinci Code’, since although it uses religion and religious beliefs as the back-drop, at no point does it ridicule them. Instead the novel treads a safe path by showing a common meeting point for the two.
