Digital Fortress (English, Paperback, Dan Brown)

he focal point of the novel is the NSA’s clandestine TRANSLTR, capable of deciphering any code and designed for the purpose invading the nation’s Internet privacy, and one man’s ingenious creation - the NSA’s worst nightmare.

Summary Of The Book

Digital Fortress, a science fiction thriller novel by Dan Brown, was published in 1998 and since then has been translated into several foreign languages.

To avoid public unrest, the common man of course is kept oblivious of the fact that the NSA is using its supercomputer, the TRANSLTR, to pry into their emails, with the objective of maintaining national security. Anxiety starts brewing, when an NSA expellee, devises an ingenious algorithm that is effective in formulating codes that even the TRANSLTR is incapable of decrypting.

Stumped by this new dilemma, Strathmore, commander of NSA, assigns the head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher to translate it. As Susan works on cracking this complicated cipher, Digital Fortress, she discerns the identity of the coder: Ensei Tankado, who strictly disapproves infringing upon people’s private lives! Susan further discovers that Tankado’s design, is to auction the Digital Fortress algorithm on his website and if this isn’t bad enough, ‘NDAKOTA’, his partner would expose it freely to the world, in the event of Tankado’s death. This would be too big a blow for the NSA.

Before enough can be done to crack the code however, news arrives from Seville that Tankado had died of what seemed to be a heart attack. When Commander Strathmore dispatches Susan’s fiancé to salvage the victim’s thumb ring, which he believes holds the key to disclose digital Fortress, Becker arrives to find that Tankado entrusted the ring to someone just before he died. While Becker tries to gather further information, an unknown assassin goes around slaughtering everyone that he has questioned.

The story spins deeper into the labyrinth with a series of events all taking place synchronously; we witness the enigmatic phone conversation between Numakata and NDAKOTA. The book ends by revealing the true identity of NDAKOTA and finally, the secret of Digital Fortress.

The novel is quite fast paced and like all of Dan Brown’s books, has received favorable reviews world over.

About Dan Brown

Dan Brown is an American science fiction novelist famous for his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code.

Digital Fortress was Brown’s first novel after which he wrote, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, which were adapted into film. He also authored 187 Men To Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman and The Bald Book, which fall under the genre of humour writing.

Dan Brown’s works involve extensive research in the fields of science, history and more and are very often quite informative. His prose is not known for its grace or style, but for the writing style that makes confounding scientific theories understandable to the reader. Brown’s thriller novels are always fast paced and racy, full of symbols and codes, and finish with a breathtaking climax.

Born on 22 June, 1964, Brown was raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, with two younger siblings. Dan completed an art history course in Spain and then finished his graduation at Amherst University. Being the son of two musicians, he tried his luck with a musical career for a short span of time and released a few of his own CDs.  It was during this period that he met his life partner Blythe Newton. They married in 1997 and moved back to NH together.