HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILI SUSPENSE

Cryptologia, Jan 2005 by Kruh, Louis

HYPNEROTOMACHIA POLIPHILI SUSPENSE Caldwell, Ian and Dustin Thomason. The Rule of Four. The Dial Press/Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway NY 10019 USA. 2004. 372 pp. $24.00/$34 CANADA.

An intellectually intriguing suspense novel set at Princeton University involves a 15th century coded manuscript and four roommates, two of whom, Paul Harris and Tom Sullivan, have links to the rare text.

The 500-hundred-year-old manuscript is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which means the "struggle for love in a dream" of a man called Poliphili. Published anonymously in 1499 in Venice, the book has since been attributed to Francesco Colonna. Written in seven languages, and illustrated with bizarre and often deeply disturbing woodcuts, it is one of the most obscure, impenetrable books in the world and allegedly contains embedded codes revealing the location of a buried Roman treasure.

Tom's father was a Renaissance scholar obsessed with the Hypnerotomachia and spent his life trying to unravel its secret without success, and Paul, who is writing his senior thesis on it, works with him to crack its secret. The story is set against the background of campus activities, budding relationships and underground passages. But the emphasis is on the Hypnerotomachia as the thesis deadline draws closer and Paul speculates on the possibility that Colonna combined cryptography and steganography. They also believe the book contains a series of cryptic riddles that once solved, permit the solution of other hidden meanings within the text.

The book is an erudite thriller that both entertains and informs and even with some dull parts, it is a story you will not soon forget.