Dan Brown is an American novelist. His books, including "The Da Vinci Code", "Angels and Demons" and "Inferno", have sold over 250m copies, been made into films and translated into 56 languages. A YouGov poll of the most famous fiction books put "The Da Vinci Code" at 12th, far above Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" (73rd) and George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (81st).
His novels centre on Robert Langdon, a fictional Harvard "symbologist", and interweave real artworks, artefacts and historical references with conspiracy theories. "The Da Vinci Code" was based on the idea that evidence of Jesus's marriage can be seen in Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper". His 2025 novel, "The Secret of Secrets", is set in Prague and explores the nature of consciousness.
Most people can do without the essentials, but not without the luxuries.