Product Description

Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters addressed ominously to 'My dear and unfortunate successor'. Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of - a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history. In those few quiet moments, she unwittingly assumes a quest she will discover is her birthright - a hunt for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the Dracula myth. Deciphering obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions, and evading terrifying adversaries, one woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions - a captivating tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful - and utterly unforgettable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5643 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some stories can be told again in endlessly different ways. Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian combines a search for the historical Dracula with a profound sense that Stoker got some things right--that the late Mediaeval tyrant kills among us yet, undead and dangerous. From Stoker, she also takes a sense that the supernatural seems more real when embedded in documentary evidence.

Three generations search for Dracula's resting place, and their stories are nested within each other, so that we know that at least two quests ended badly. Kostova rations her thrills very carefully so that we jump out of our chair at quite slight surprises, especially when we have come to expect buckets of blood and loud bangs. She also has a profound and well-communicated sense of place and period, so that the book is equally at home in 1930s Rumania, Cold War Budapest and 1970s Oxford. Kostova is particularly good on the sights and sounds of remote country places and the taste of real peasant food--this sensuous realism does not always go with her other skill, the creation of imagined documents and folksongs that feel as real and true as what might be actual.

This is a quietly good book rather than a spectacular debut, with some uncomfortable twists in its tail; her heroine-narrators are, and perhaps remain, in the most serious of jeopardies. ---Roz Kaveney

Review
'A spirited update of Bram Stoker's classic, with a vastly ingenious plot in which Dracula has developed a mysterious penchant for librarians ... Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace' Observer 'Told with a compelling intensity which will keep the reader hooked until the last Undead tomb door swings shut' Sunday Telegraph 'Filled with fascinating details of archaic vampire lore, the splendours of the Ottoman Empire and the beauty of Romania' TLS ‘This literary thriller is a page-turner with brains' Daily Mail ‘The Historian amounts to something profound... and wondrously mathematical at times, a genre novel by Bach ... We encounter obsession, possession, and the struggle against the brevity of life. It is an exploration of the eternal desire for intimacy...Kostova captures, beautifully, the turn on a dime from light to dark' The Times ‘The Historian is great fun... told with a compelling intensity which will keep the reader hooked until the last Undead tomb door swings shut' Sunday Telegraph ‘A gasp-inducing, breathtakingly dark mystery set in the present but wrapped around the folklore and history of Dracula…written in an exquisitely delicate and reserved style' Good Housekeeping ‘Filled with fascinating details of archaic vampire lore, the splendours of the Ottoman Empire and the beauty of the Romanian countryside' TLS ‘Dracula's back - and alive and well (or at least undead) in Elizabeth Kostova's compelling novel' InStyle ‘Hotly anticipated... This exploration of Dracula from a historical perspective is more cerebral cortex than punctured jugulars and reads all the better for it' Eve ‘A cross between Dracula and The Da Vinci Code' Observer ‘Kostova's research is exemplary... if you're drawn to the gothic in fiction, reading this on hot nights will induce a few shivers' Herald “Elizabeth Kostova is an accomplished debutante who has produced an intriguing and carefully crafted novel". THE HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW “She weaves myth, fact and adventure in this well-written, creepy time-slip novel that left me wanting to go back to Bram Stoker" NewBOOKS magazine ‘It's the impeccably researched and subtly chilling story of a young woman's search for the truth about her historian father, and his quest to find Vlad himself. It's so refreshing to read genuinely sinister and suspenseful literary horror which does not need to rely on shock tactics' Bookseller ‘Terrific reworking of the Dracula tale... It's gripping stuff and a lovely big read for summer' Bookseller ‘Captivating, cleverly written' New Books Magazine ‘The perfect summer read... Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel has the perfect mix of mystery and adventure and, based as it is around the legend of Dracula, a healthy dose of horror as well. If you take one book on holiday this year, make it the Historian' Waterstone's Books Quarterly The Historian is a marvelous book that draws the reader into an infectious vortex of mystery and discovery. It is beautifully written and full of real and believable characters, but what most impresses me is the way Elizabeth Kostova has taken an old and worn genre and made it entirely fresh and undeniably her own. This is great fiction. - David Liss

DAILY MAIL
'This literary mystery is a page-turner with brains'

Customer Reviews

fantastic book
I found this book to be intriguing and I pretty much read it as quickly as I could.

I liked the way it was told with a mixture of letter writing and present day. I also thought the concept was good.

While some places were a bit 'iffy' overall I think the book works marvellously. You have to pay attention, but you get the satisfaction of finding out new information and a good yarn into the bargain.

Atmospheric and respectful
It is hard to believe this is a first novel, so successfully has Elizabeth Kostova captured the atmosphere of the original novel. It is written in a twin narrative by father and daughter, always a voyage of discovery backwards through time via research, documents and letters, left by those who went before...

It is a beautifully conveived idea. It is written with a great eye for detail and a wonderful ear for the academic voice and retrained mores of the time. Despite the length of this book (at over 700 pages of close type paperback) Kostova's style is actually highly economical. What she delivers is predominantly a historical mystery mixed with travelogue and laced with an undercurrent of elusive gothic horror. Occasionally the horror breaks through but Kostova never surrenders to it totally, much to her credit, as this would shatter the style of her writing and the credibility of the characters. She produces more shudders from eerily unsettling us than she could deliver via gratuitious shocks.

Kostova populates her novels with evenly introduced characters. You won't need your family tree wall planner to keep up with who is who. It's not Jane Austen - even if the tone owes something to her discipline. The slow unwinding allows them to develop, yet I found myself greedy for more developments and tearing through this book very rapidly at around 80 pages a day. It really does grip you, and given how detailed it is and and how carefully it is written, that's a terrific compliment. Of course, she inherits a wonderful legacy from Bram Stoker's spell-binding character, and the Dracula novel and films is openly referred to which makes it even more intruiging.

This is an archivists' drama - the librarian meets the undead. It casts a shadow over your nightgown (um...) and if you're thinking to yourself, 'Dracula - horror - blood - gore - etc' you'll be very disappointed. The people who will get most out of this are probably the ones who know least about the films and it definitely repays the literary reader. (Mind you, being a pedant I did spot three split infinitives...).

It is nice to gorge so thoroughly on a book that fully justifies the hype on the dust jacket and inside cover. If I have one minor criticism it is the slightly tapering end and I think Kostova could have made more of the ending somehow - I suppose I am secretly on the side of anybody who keeps a good book collection even if he is a vampire. A very nearly superb work. Four and a half stars.

Hard Going!
This book was very hard going at times but I persevered and was glad I did as the meeting between Professor Rossi and Dracula described in the last few pages of the book was hair-raising stuff!

Tough going but very enjoyable in places.