The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is one of the best-selling American novels of all time. Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon—the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons—The Da Vinci Code follows symbologist Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu after a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris entangles them in a dispute between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus and Mary Magdalene having had a child together. The novel explores an alternative religious history, whose central plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, ideas derived from Clive Prince's The Templar Revelation (1997) and books by Margaret Starbird. The book also refers to Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, 1982), although Brown stated that it was not used as research material. The Da Vinci Code provoked a popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene's role in the history of Christianity. The book has been extensively denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Catholic Church, and also consistently criticized by scholars for its fantastical historical narrative. The novel became a massive worldwide bestseller, selling 80 million copies as of 2009, and has been translated into 44 languages. In November 2004, Random House published a Special Illustrated Edition with 160 illustrations. In 2006, a film adaptation was released by Columbia Pictures.