The Russian translation of The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown's latest novel, will hit the shelves in bookstores around the country on Thursday, Russian publisher AST said.

"More than 60 countries have bought the publishing rights for this novel. Millions of Brown's fans around the world awaited the release of this book," said AST spokeswoman Valeria Osipova.

Released on September 15, 2009, The Lost Symbol is the third Brown's novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's giga-seller The Da Vinci Code.

It had a first printing of 6.5 million and sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions on its first day in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history.

The story focuses on Freemasonry. Robert Langdon is summoned to Washington to give a lecture on architectural symbolism and then gets involved in a 12-hour national security crisis.

The New York Times praised the book as being "impossible to put down" and claimed Brown was "bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead".

MOSCOW, December 10 (RIA Novosti)