In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood. Anne Rice`s compulsively readable novel is arguably the most celebrated work of vampire fiction since Bram Stoker`s Dracula was published in 1897. As the Washington Post said on its first publication, it is a `thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination... sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable.