Bram Stoker's great grandnephew to write Dracula sequel

London, Oct 7 : A sequel to the novel Dracula has been co-authored by its creator Bram Stoker's great grandnephew Dacre Stoker.

The war of the un-dead will rise again in the new book, which Dacre wrote with screenwriter Ian Holt.

Dacre, who formerly coached the Canadian Olympic pentathlon team and now lives in the US, went through his ancestor's handwritten notes on the original Dracula novel to pen his sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead.

The new book is said to have caused quite a big storm in the publishing world, selling for more than 575,000 pounds to Dutton US, HarperCollins UK and Penguin Canada.

It is due to be published next October.

A movie is also being planned on the novel, which draws on excised characters and plot lines that were cut from Stoker's original, first published 111 years ago.

Stoker said that he had not got around to reading his great-grand-uncle's novel until he went to college.

"Word got out about my family connection to the old vamp and I grew tired of being unable to answer people's questions. So I chose to finally break down and read the novel for a research paper on Bram and his possible motivations to write the story," the Guardian quoted him as saying.

"I had seen so many film versions of Dracula and was terribly surprised that very few of the films had any resemblance to Bram's original novel. Because the novel was so good and had stood up so well over the years, I found it exceedingly sad that all of the trash Hollywood had put out monumentally sullied Bram's and my family's literary legacy," he said.

When Dacre Stoker met Holt, the pair decided to work together to resurrect Bram Stoker's original themes and characters.

"Our intent is to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity," Stoker added.

Bram Stoker's original Dracula has never been out of print since it was published in 1897.

ANI