The Secret of Secrets
Dan Brown and Jewish mysticism Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin
Europe’s oldest synagogue, the Alt-Neu Synagogue completed in 1270 in Prague, features prominently —along with the mythological Golem, Kabbala and Prague’s ancient Jewish cemetery—in Dan Brown’s latest conspiracy thriller, The Secret of Secrets. In the book’s Acknowledgments, Brown thanks his Czech editor for ‘helping me see the spectacular city of Prague in a truly mystical light’.
Brown introduces the Old-New Synagogue with a descriptive flourish: ‘nestled in the neighbourhood of Josefov—once the original walled Jewish ghetto of Prague’. He writes that it has been ‘a silent witness to the changing tides of history since the late thirteenth century. Despite the encroachments of time and tumultuous events that Prague has endured, the synagogue remains unscathed—a testament to the resilience of faith and tradition’. One of Brown’s colourful characters finds his way to the old synagogue where, ‘he heard a tour guide narrating the legend of the Jewish ghetto’s great protector—a guardian soul inserted into the body of a clay monster’. Inspired by this legend, the visitor mimics the persona and appearance of the original clay entity created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also known as the Maharal of Prague, whom Brown characterises as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and the Talmud, a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and Kabbalist, ‘who had written extensively, including an important text known as Gur Aryeh al HaTorah’.
Brown’s description of the old Jewish cemetery is most compelling, ‘a somber chronicle to the intolerance of humankind’; and it is here that his Golem picks up a kippa and seeks Rabbi Loew’s grave, motivated by respect for the Rabbi ‘who had created the first of his kind’, the original Golem. Standing at the grave, ‘The Golem reverently knelt on the cold ground and opened his mind to the unseen connections of the universe…the unity of souls that so many failed to perceive…and refused to believe’.
It is astounding to think how many committed fans of Brown’s books that feature his central character, Professor of Symbology Robert Langdon, will meet for the first time these and other Jewish phenomena and artefacts in Brown’s latest novel. It is all the more overwhelming when one takes into account that Brown’s most successful book, The Da Vinci Code, sold 80 million copies. That figure is neither an error nor a misprint. Dan Brown is a brand with global recognition.
The major themes of Brown’s latest book, the sixth in the Robert Langford series, are the phenomenon of human consciousness and its effects on the human body; Brown’s own preoccupation with death and the exploration of human consciousness’s life after life; and the near-death and out-of-body experiences documented by noetic scientists, who specialise in this field of paranormal research and experimentation. He records his debt to ‘the remarkable minds who make up the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ and expresses gratitude for research assistance from ‘a wide array of scientists, historians, curators, religious scholars, government officials and private organisations’. It is this intellectual input that possibly underscores the book’s major weakness, the integration into the text of large amounts of factual information and hypotheses, all poorly disguised as relatively stilted dialogue between the book’s characters.
This is a difficult book to review without reverting to multiple spoiler alerts. After all, the title says it all, The Secret of Secrets, and there are a lot of secrets to be decoded in this massive 670-page tome that took Brown eight years to research and write secrecy the reviewer has to respect. These include the publication and security processes of Brown’s publishers, Random House USA headquarters in New York City.
So, if these are the book’s weaknesses, what are its strengths? While driving his complex narrative forward, Brown demonstrates impressive control of his intricately plotted story. At the conclusion of every chapter, he illustrates his mastery of the cliffhanger. This is physically a big book with big themes of thanatology, the study of death and dying, as well as investigations in noetic science, which uses intuitive methodologies to explore subjective experiences. The author is patently sincere in his belief that a revolution in the understanding of brain consciousness will confound the sceptics, as suggested by his character and love interest, the alluring and intelligent noetic scientist Dr Katherine Solomon, whose unpublished manuscript on these topics triggers frenetic action in CIA and diplomatic circles.
The Da Vinci Code was published in 56 languages so, inevitably, Brown’s multimillion fan base worldwide is sure to power this book into the ranks of the bestsellers, potentially confirming it as another pop-culture sensation. The Secret of Secrets is bound to be another publication juggernaut. It will be interesting to see if today’s youth, who are fixated on screens, can be seduced into reading his latest thriller. If not, the book is definitely coming to TV audiences in a Netflix adaptation, which will blend futuristic science with mystical lore. Brown, as writer and executive producer, has already co-created the book-to-screen series.
The Secret of Secrets
By Dan Brown
Bantam (Transworld Publishers)
October 2025
