TWENTY-YEAR-OLD CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI’S FIRST NOVEL, ERAGON, REACHES ONE MILLION COPIES IN PRINT JUST SIX MONTHS AFTER PUBLICATION

Eragon Was An Instant New York Times Bestseller And Has Spent 26 Consecutive Weeks On The List Where It Is Currently The #1 Bestselling Children’s Chapter Book

New York, NY (February 26, 2004)—Twenty-year-old Christopher Paolini’s debut novel, Eragon, has reached one million copies in print only six months after publication by Alfred A. Knopf, it was announced today by Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books. The book was an instant bestseller upon its release on August 26, 2003, and young Paolini’s incredible story quickly began to spread, with features appearing in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and People magazine who said, “Christopher Paolini make[s] literary magic with his precocious debut…” Home schooled by his parents, Paolini was just 15 when he wrote Eragon, and self-published the book with his family’s help in February 2002.

“We are absolutely delighted to see Eragon reach this incredible milestone,” said Gibson. “Everyone here rallied around Christopher’s brilliant book with the passionate intensity it deserves, and it’s been singularly gratifying to see booksellers and readers embrace Eragon with like fervor and enthusiasm. We are tremendously grateful to everyone who has contributed to the book’s wonderful success.”

Eragon appears consistently on USA Today’s Top 50 Bestselling Books list, the Book Sense Bestseller list, Publishers Weekly’s bestseller list and others. But the book’s popularity extends far beyond the United States: foreign publication rights to Eragon have been sold in 29 countries and it is currently the #1 bestselling children’s book in the United Kingdom and is a bestseller in both Ireland and Australia.

Christopher Paolini describes himself as “a voracious reader with an insatiable appetite for unusual knowledge” and credits his “abiding love” of fantasy and science fiction as his inspiration for writing the book. Eragon is the story of a young man, Eragon, who lives in a magical land called Alagaësia, and believes he is merely a poor orphan—until a mysterious blue stone changes his life forever. He unwittingly becomes linked with a brilliant blue dragon, Saphira, and inherits the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders. Paolini lives in Montana with his family. He is currently at work writing Eldest, Book Two of The Inheritance Trilogy. Eldest is scheduled for publication in fall 2005.

Eragon is published by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of the Knopf Delacorte Dell Young Readers Group division of Random House Children’s Books. Random House Children’s Books is one of America’s foremost publishers of literature for infants through young adult readers in all formats, from board books to picture books, to novels and narrative nonfiction. The imprints of Random House Children’s Books offer publishing programs that bring together world-famous franchise characters, multi-million copy series, and top-flight award-winning authors and illustrators. Random House Children’s Books is a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG.