The subject of this book is the theory of abelian varieties over the field of complex numbers. It covers the main results of the theory, both classic and recent, in modern language. It is intended to give a comprehensive introduction to the field, but also to serve as a reference. The focal topics are the projective embeddings of an abelian variety, their equations and geometric properties. Moreover several moduli spaces of abelian varieties with additional structure are constructed. Some special results on Jacobians and Prym varieties allow applications to the theory of algebraic curves.

The second edition contains five new chapters which present some of the most important recent result on the subject. Among them are results on automorphisms and vector bundles on abelian varieties, algebraic cycles and the Hodge conjecture.