Anne Rice died, the author of ‘Interview with the Vampire’ was 80 years old

The American writer Anne Rice, an icon of ‘dark’ literature, has died at the age of 80. With her ” Vampire Chronicles ” and the saga dedicated to the witches of the Mayfair family, she has sold over 100 million copies worldwide. She had achieved international success with “Interview with the vampire” (1976, published in Italian by Longanesi), becoming a cult author of horror fiction, generating a new mythology of the vampire, an unprecedented incarnation of the intensity of pain and the experiences of a life lost forever. The 1994 film of the same name, directed by Neil Jordan, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater and a young Kirsten Dunst, was based on the novel that opened the ‘new gothic’ trend. Anne Rice passed away surrounded by her family on Saturday night (December 11) from complications from a stroke. The announcement of the disappearance was made by his son Christopher Travis Rice (himself a novelist, born in 1978) in a statement posted on Facebook and Twitter. The writer will be buried in the family mausoleum at New Orleans’ Metairie Cemetery in a private ceremony. She was born as Howard Allen Frances O’Brien in New Orleans on October 4, 1941. Her son Christopher remembers her mother missing 19 years after her husband, poet Stan Rice, married in 1961 and died of cancer in 2002, to whom we owe the inspiration for the creation of his most famous character, the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. In Italian his novels are published by Longanesi and Tea. The “Vampire Chronicles” series includes the titles “Interview with the Vampire”, “Chosen by Darkness”, “Queen of the Damned”, “The Body Thief”, “Memnoch the Devil”, “Armand the Vampire”, “Merrick the Witch “,” The Vampire Marius “,” The Blackwood Vampire “,” Blood “,” Prince Lestat “. The saga “The witches of Mayfair” sees among its titles “The hour of the witches”, “The incarnate demon” and “Taltos, the return”. (By Paolo Martini)