Sandro Botticelli
Dan Brown is the author of numerous bestselling novels, including Inferno, by which this blog is inspired. It’s appropriate to write an article on his life and career.
In 2005 Brown was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine. His novels are published in 52 languages around the world, with 200 million copies in print.
Early Life
Brown was born on June 22, 1964, in New Hampshire, USA, to Constance and Richard G. Brown. Brown and his two younger siblings were raised in a boarding school where his father taught mathematics, while his mother served as leader of a church choir.
After graduating from high school in 1982, Brown attended Amherst College (Massachusetts), from which he graduated with a major in English and Spanish in 1986. Brown played squash, took part in a fraternity, and sang in the Amherst Glee Club.
Short Musical Career
Following his experience as a singer in university, Brown attempted to enter the music business by creating a children’s cassette (“SynthAnimals”), and later released a CD (“Perspective”).
Soon after moving to Los Angeles, where he joined the National Academy of Songwriters, he met his future wife, Blythe Newlon. The two soon moved back to New Hampshire where they would marry four years later. Brown’s last musical products were two other CDs he released, entitled “Dan Brown” and “Angels and Demons” (his future best-seller). Although he had little success in the music industry, in 1990 he wrote his first book, 187 Men to Avoid, a dating survival guide for women, which was published in 1995.
Beginning of Writing
Brown’s sudden transition to writing full-time occured during a vacation in Tahiti, in 1993, when he read “The Doomsday Conspiracy”, a novel by Sidney Sheldon, and was inspired to become a writer of thrillers.
Brown then started working on Digital Fortress, setting much of it in Seville, where he had studied in 1985. It was eventually published in 1998, but was not an immediate success.
Centered on clandestine organizations and code breaking, the novel nevertheless became a model for Brown’s later works.
In between writing his suspense novels, Brown and his wife released books on humor, under the pseudonym Danielle Brown.
Brown subsequently wrote Angels & Demons and Deception Point, released in 2000 and 2001 respectively, the former of which was the first to feature the lead character, Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon.
Bestselling Author
Brown’s fourth book, The Da Vinci Code, a thriller that centres on art history, the origins of Christianity, and arcane theories proved to be an immidiate success, reaching the top of the New York Times Best Seller list and selling over 60 million copies.
In 2006 The Da Vinci Code was adapted to the big screens in a production that had Ron Howard as director, Tom Hanks starring as Robert Langdon, and a long list of talented actors portraying the remaining characters.
Brown himself was credited as an executive producer and as a writer for the movie.
The Da Vinci Code caught the media’s attention.
Many religious instititues presented the book as “Anti-Christian” (while Brown himself declared he is Christian), and someone even claimed that Brown plagarised the idea behind the Holy Grail from a book entitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Brown won the case in 2007.
Brown’s third novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, was released on September 2009. Initial plans to turn this novel into a movie have been put on hold. The novel features the fraternity of Freemasons as well as a branch of psychic science known as Noetic science. It deals with the little-known legend of the Ancient Mysteries.
Dan Brown’s latest book, Inferno, saw Langdon following clues related to Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy in an effort to stop the release of a plague.
The American actor Tom Hanks will reprise his role as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon in May for the film version of Dan Brown’s latest bestseller Inferno.
Hanks is joined by Felicity Jones, who will play the role of Dr. Sienna Brooks, and by the actors Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan, and Sidse Babett Knudsen.
We now have to wait for the Inferno movie and the next book!
Picture by plus.google.com
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