Dan Brown

Daniel Gerhard Brown, known as Dan Brown, is an American novelist born in 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is the author of the Robert Langdon series, which includes Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, the book that made him a global publishing phenomenon. His significance lies in bringing the thriller built on cryptography, art and history to a very large readership, as well as in the controversy his religiously charged plots have provoked.

He grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father, a mathematics teacher and textbook author, staged treasure hunts for his children full of codes and clues. His mother, trained as a church organist, introduced him to sacred music. That fascination with puzzles shaped his youth. In 1980 he spent a summer in Gijón learning Spanish, living with a local family; it was his first trip abroad. He later studied at Amherst College, majoring in English and Spanish, and in 1985 spent a year in Seville. About that period there is a disagreement: Brown has said he studied art history, but the University of Seville stated it had no record of him as a student and that, if he attended, it was probably a short summer course.

After graduating he turned to music, releasing children's recordings and an adult album before moving to Hollywood in 1991 to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter and pianist, teaching English and Spanish to pay the bills. There he met Blythe Newlon, who helped promote his projects and whom he married in 1997. He returned to New Hampshire in 1993 and kept teaching. Recognition as a performer never reached the level he hoped for, and the decisive turn came in the summer of 1993, on holiday in Tahiti, when he found a Sidney Sheldon novel, The Doomsday Conspiracy, and was inspired to write thrillers.

His first novel, Digital Fortress (1998), set around the National Security Agency, sold moderately well and drew criticism for its technological inaccuracies. Angels & Demons (2000) introduced Robert Langdon, and Deception Point (2001) continued the pattern of plots that blend science, politics and mystery. The Da Vinci Code (2003), built around the Holy Grail, secret societies and supposed hidden messages in Leonardo's work, was the book that carried him to the top of the bestseller lists. His novels, which usually unfold over about twenty-four hours and revolve around symbols, art and conspiracy theories, have been translated into dozens of languages and had sold over 200 million copies by 2012.

His legacy lies largely in popularising the contemporary treasure-hunt novel and in the momentum his film adaptations gave the genre, most of them starring Tom Hanks under Ron Howard's direction. His books have also fuelled debate about the relationship between historical fiction and faith, a debate the author himself has said he welcomes as part of his own spiritual inquiry.