Year: 1976
Place:
Publisher: Knopf
Comments:
-Filmed in 1994, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
-The original manuscript differed from the final published version: the entire scene of the Th��tre des vampires was added and lestat was brought back to life after his supposed death by fire
-Originally begun as a short story
The book opens with a scene in a room in New orleans. A reporter came across a vampire, who was willingly to tell his life story to him. His name was Louis de Pointe du Lac. He started his story in new orleans, 1791. Louis owned a plantage and was at that time devastated by his wife's death. He had no will to live anymore and invited death in. It took the shape of the vampire Lestat. Lestat turned Louis into a vampire and learned him how to prey on humans to survive. The young man however was reluctant to kill humans: he fed on rats. One night he entered a plague infected area and discovered a little girl, who clung to her dead mother. Louis meant to do her no harm but his mortallity was too far gone and he drank her blood. Lestat in the meantime saw what happened and turned Claudia into a vampire. She became a model vampire and completed the 'Happy family'. One day, angry at the one who made her, she kills Lestat and with Louis throws the body in a swamp. Lestat wasn't really dead and so they flee to Paris, leaving him in a burning house. In search for others they meet Santino and Armand who leads the "Th��tre des Vampires", a place where vampires playing mortals playing vampires who kill humans. Louis is pleased with his new mentor, but Claudia senses some hostility towards her, because it's a crime to make one so young (and to kill vampires). She finds her own companion in Madeline, made a vampire by Louis. However the theatre's vampires guided by Santiago abduct her and Madeline, throwing her into a pit where they burned to ashes by sunrise; Louis was buried alive, but saved by Armand. He takes his revenge by burning the place down and escapes with Armand.
20th century. Louis is wandering through NO and feels the presence of another vampire. He discovers a frightened Lestat in an abandoned house, shivering by the age he doesn't understand. Louis leaves him there.
Meanwhile the reporter is begging him to become an immortal. In anger Louis exits the room. The reporter rushes to his car, plays the tape while driving. Suddenly a vampire takes over the wheel, feeds on him and enters the new world: it's Lestat...
Source: my memory (so beware) and mostly based on the film (quite true to the book, for more details: I suggest you read it) and The Official Anne rice Site