The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a mystery/detective novel by American author Dan Brown, published in 2003 by Doubleday.
The novel has provoked popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity. According to the premise of the novel, the Vatican knows it is perpetuating a lie about Jesus' bloodline and the role of women in church, but continues to do so to keep itself in power.
Dan Brown's novel was a smash hit in 2004, even rivaling the sales of the highly popular Harry Potter series. It spawned a number of offspring books and drew glowing reviews from the New York Times, People Magazine and the Washington Post. It also re-ignited interest in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. As well as re-invigorating interest in the Church, The Da Vinci Code, itself pre-figured by other Grail books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent and others, and Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, has also spawned a number of novels that have a striking resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, including Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar, and The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry.
It is a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print (as of May 2006) and has been translated into 44 languages. It is thought to be the thirteenth best-selling book of all time. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, the book is the second book by Dan Brown to include the character Robert Langdon, the first being Brown's 2000 novel, Angels and Demons. In November 2004, Random House published a "Special Illustrated Edition", with 160 illustrations interspersed with the text..
From Wikipedia.org
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