City chairman lodges protest with author over his description of Philippines capital as ‘the gates of hell’ in latest novel

He is better known for infuriating reviewers with his clunky pseudo-science and cheesy religious symbolism in thrillers that have sold all over the world. Now Dan Brown has also incurred the wrath of Manila for calling the capital the "gates of hell" in his latest book, Inferno.

Based loosely on Dante's Inferno, the novel once again features Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon – the protagonist from best-sellers The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol – as it follows Sienna, his balding female companion, to the sprawling city of 13 million. There she is overcome by the city's destitution, filth and child prostitution – and is later raped in one of its many slums. Depicting Manila as a city of "six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution [and] horrifying sex trade", Sienna tells readers she has "run through the gates of hell".

While the book has raced to the top of the UK book charts – selling nearly 230,000 copies within its first week – it has been panned by British reviewers, who have called it "barmy" and "dreadful". "I used to think that Dan Brown was merely bad. Now, after reading the latest version of the apocalyptic thriller he rewrites every few years, I suspect he might be mad as well," wrote Peter Conrad in the Observer. "Hogwarts Academy, compared with Brown's brain, is a clean, well-lighted, supremely lucid place."

Dismissive reviews and the book's fictional nature haven't stopped Filipino officials from smarting at Brown's description of their capital city. In an open letter to the author, Metro Manila's chairman Francis Tolentino described the city's great "disappoint[ment] by your inaccurate portrayal of our beloved metropolis" and said: "We are displeased [by] how you have used Manila as a venue and source of a character's breakdown and trauma, much more her disillusionment in humanity."

Tolentino then offered his own writerly take on the city, calling Manila "an entry to heaven" and a "centre of Filipino spirit, faith and hope", which some commentators on social media have deemed laughable and out of touch.

"MMDA Chairman Francis Tolentino is either blind or perhaps never leaves his guarded mansion without his chauffered limo with its tinted windows," commented one reader on the PhilStar website, describing Brown's depiction of the city as "near perfect".

"If he is incapable of recognising the city and its citizens he is hired to improve and develop, he is clearly incapable of this position."

Manila may be a city where extreme wealth and poverty regularly rub shoulders -- roughly 43% of its 13 million inhabitants live in shanties – but Filipino officials do not appreciate having their city publicly panned. In 1999 President Joseph Estrada famously banned from the country Hollywood starlet Claire Danes – whose film Brokedown Palace was shot in Manila – after she described the city as smelly, weird and full of rats.

Estrada has since promised to clean up the capital after being elected mayor of Manila in last week's elections.