Tom Egeland is a Norwegian author. His great-grandfather was Jon Flatabø from Kvam in Hardanger, one of the pioneer authors of popular literature in Norway. Egeland's novels are published in Norwegian and translated into 25 languages. His most famous novel is Sirkelens ende, published in English with the title Relic, which deals with several of the same topics as The Da Vinci Code. Egeland's book was published in 2001, two years before The Da Vinci Code.