Rice composed the novel shortly after the death of her young daughter Michelle, who served as an inspiration for the child-vampire character Claudia.
Though initially the subject of mixed critical reception, the book was followed by many widely popular sequels, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles.
A vampire named Louis de Pointe du Lac tells his 200-year-long life story to a reporter referred to simply as "the boy".
Louis sets his own plantation aflame; he and Lestat kill the slaves to keep word from spreading about vampires living in Louisiana.
He slowly comes to terms with his vampire nature, but also becomes increasingly repulsed by what he perceives as Lestat's total lack of compassion for the humans he preys upon.
Claudia takes to killing easily, but she begins to realize over time she can never grow up; her mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman, but her body remains that of a young girl.
Louis sets fire to their home and barely escapes with Claudia, leaving a furious Lestat to be consumed by the flames.
He demands Claudia face punishment, even death, for her murder attempt but screams at the coven that they promised not to harm Louis.
Louis sees Lestat crying over the remnants of Claudia's yellow dress, but loses track of him as he plots his revenge against the theatre coven.
Louis returns to the Theatre late the following night, burning it to the ground and killing all the vampires inside, leaving with Armand.
Together, the two travel across Europe for several years, but Louis never fully recovers from Claudia's death, and the emotional connection between himself and Armand becomes strained.
Louis ends his tale; revealing that after 200 years, he is weary of immortality and of all the pain and suffering to which he has had to bear witness and create.
In 1970, while Anne Rice was attending a graduate program in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, her daughter Michelle, then about four years old, was diagnosed with acute granulocytic leukemia.
[1] Michelle died of the illness about two years later,[1][2][3] and Rice fell into a deep depression, turning to alcohol in order to cope.
[14] Leo Braudy writing for The New York Times said: "[...] the book is too superficial, too impersonal and too obviously made, to touch the sources of real terror and feeling.
[14] 1988's The Queen of the Damned improved on Lestat's numbers, receiving an initial hardcover run of 405,000 and topping the New York Times Best Seller list.
[14] Rice's vampire books share a fictional universe with her series Lives of the Mayfair Witches and the novel The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned.
[20][21] Production of those scenes was put on hold for a few weeks whilst River Phoenix, who had been cast as the interviewer, finished working on the film Dark Blood.
[22][23][24][25][26] The film was released in November 1994 to generally positive critical reaction,[27] and received Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Original Score.
[40] In May 2020, AMC acquired the rights to The Vampire Chronicles and Lives of the Mayfair Witches for developing film and television projects.
[42] Interview with the Vampire stars Jacob Anderson as Louis,[43] Sam Reid as Lestat,[44] Bailey Bass/Delainey Hayles as Claudia,[45][46] and Assad Zaman as Rashid/Armand.