More Book Reviews: Inferno

InfernoSet in present time, the book depicts the famous Robert Langdon character's adventure through the beautiful European city of Florence, Italy. Destined to meet a brilliant genetic germ-line manipulation professional who feels so righteously excusable to spread a plague to the whole world. As always, you can expect a full blown vivid description of the landscapes, and especially the arts. The writer looks like he did a very extensive research on everything, so much that i don't know which ones are fictitious. Maybe i can find out as easily as a google search, but why spoil the story? hahaha.. anyway, i googled enough of the tourist spots and made a mental note that someday i have to see them myself.

The most interesting part however, is how he manages to turn the evil antagonistic crime into some kind of justifiable deed in a gray area. The readers are somehow forced to think that the outcome is favorable for human kind regardless the method. Still, the even more surprising twist that keeps nagging in the back of my head is how true the problem is. I even looked for the graph and it is there on the WHO database.

====THERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS AFTER THIS====

So, i was saying that this book, as fictive as it is, opened my eyes to the reality of overpopulation, of how ill-handled the problem is. There is only so much that our earth can supply us with, if we keep multiplying at this frightening rate we may run out of time before even a century. How bad this next statement might sound to you, the advancement of medical technology that prolongs the life expectancy of human kind does not help to solve the problem, only adds to it. See? It doesn't sound right,hahaha..

As a moslem i then thought, do we have some kind of control over this problem in one of our rules? I mean, we don't really have a limit of the number of children we can have, some Arabian guys out there might have as many as 20 for all we know. After a couple of discussion with some friends we then concluded that the rule is written somewhere implicitly within the social rules of Islam, within the lines of social responsibilities that we have to bear for each individual we live with, including our families. The point is read and think carefully when you read the old Islamic proverb of 'with a lot of children comes greater fortunes'.

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Anyway, all in all it is a very good read. A real page turner if i may. I had planned to only read this book on my commuting time between home and school, but i couldn't. :))
Nonetheless, if you've read some of the writer's books before you might be able to predict some twists, but still, it's the climb, right? hehe
Another full recommendation! Try it..


Cheers,
Shiddiq.