Publication of The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown's thriller follows Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology, who is drawn into a murder at the Louvre in Paris and a search for a secret said to have been protected for centuries. With the French cryptologist Sophie Neveu he races through clues hidden in works of art, pursued by police and by an albino monk from the organisation Opus Dei. The book draws on legends about the Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene and a secret society called the Priory of Sion, claims that historians reject as fiction. It became a worldwide bestseller, provoked wide controversy, and was adapted for a 2006 film with Tom Hanks.

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