The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective fiction novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by the Doubleday Group in the United States and Bantam Books in the United Kingdom. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon as he investigates a murder in Paris’s Louvre Museum and discovers a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus Christ of Nazareth having been married to and fathering a child with Mary Magdalene.
The title of the novel refers to, among other things, the fact that the murder victim is found in the Denon Wing of the Louvre, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentacle drawn on his stomach in his own blood.
The novel has provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Magdalene’s role in the history of Christianity. The book has been extensively denounced by Roman Catholics and other Christians as a dishonest attack on the Catholic Church. It has also been criticized for historical and scientific inaccuracy.
Brown’s novel was a major success in 2004 and was outsold only by J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.[1] It was the winner of Book Sense’s 2004 Book of the Year Award in the Adult Fiction category. It spawned a number of offspring works and drew glowing reviews from The New York Times, People, and The Washington Post.[2] It also reignited interest in the history of the Catholic Church. Additionally, The Da Vinci Code, itself preceded by other Grail books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln; and Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, has inspired a number of novels very similar to it, including Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar and The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry. It also borrows heavily from Stuart Urban’s 2001 film [[Revelation (2001 film)|.
It is a worldwide bestseller that had 60.5 million copies in print by May 2006 and that has been translated into 44 languages. Combining the detective, thriller, and conspiracy fiction genres, the book is Brown’s second to include the character Robert Langdon, the first being his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. In November 2004 Random House published a “Special Illustrated Edition” with 160 illustrations. In 2006, an eponymous film adaptation was released by Sony’s Columbia Pictures.
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