Dan Brown

After three early novels, American author Dan Brown finally achieved a cult status with the publication of The Da Vinci Code (2003). The rest, as they say, is history. For the 50-year-old author, however, his romance with the written word started early. “I wrote my first book at the age of five,” he told an adoring crowd, mostly comprising of screaming youngsters, during the Penguin Annual Lecture 2014, held at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi on 10 November.

Of course, he dictated the novel, and his mother wrote it for him. “It had cardboard covers and had a print run of one,” Brown said, holding the ‘book’ with the cardboard cover, for the benefit of his audience. On it was scrawled the title, written obviously by a child’s hand. And the title? “The Giraffe, the Pig and Pants of Fire”.

“And, of course, it was a thriller,” he quipped.

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Avijit Ghosh wrote a very generous review on the talk, Brown’s first visit to India, in The Times of India. HERE.

On the other hand, Mayank Austen Soofi wasn’t impressed. His review HERE.