Anne Rice · 1976 · global

Anne Rice's 1976 debut, the novel that remade the vampire for the modern age. Across two centuries the vampire Louis recounts his life, from a Louisiana plantation and the lush decadence of New Orleans, to a search through Eastern Europe for others of his kind, to the Theatre des Vampires in Paris, and finally a present-day confession in San Francisco. Sensual, melancholy and philosophical, it traded horror for the ache of immortality.

1. 1
   New Orleans

   In 1791 Louis de Pointe du Lac, a grieving Louisiana plantation owner, is made a vampire by the seductive Lestat, and they prowl the streets of New Orleans for decades with the child-vampire Claudia.

2. 2
   Transylvania

   Fleeing Lestat, Louis and Claudia sail to the Old World and search the Carpathians of Eastern Europe for others of their kind, finding only soulless, mindless revenants.

3. 3
   Paris

   In Paris they discover the Theatre des Vampires and the ancient, ageless Armand, and the tragedy that will define eternity for Louis.

4. 4
   San Francisco

   And a century later, in a darkened room in San Francisco, he tells the whole of it to a boy with a tape recorder.