Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12083 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

OBSERVER
'A vastly ingenious plot . . . Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace'

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

Customer Reviews

History - bought to life!!!
Fabulous book, do'nt like stories of vampires generally, but this one was brilliant. Have recommended to all my friends,also glad to see they're going to make a film of it in 2010,but hope they don't mess about with it and stick closely to the book, could be really interesting.

Don't bother
Like many of the people above I found this very dissapointing, I expected much more from this book. 50% interesting & promising, 50% predictable and boring. Its a shame as the premis for the story is great but there are long periods where nothing happens and you quickly loose any suspense that the author had carfully built up. There are also many parts of the story that are completely unbelievable. I really struggled to finish it hoping it would all be worth it in the end....it wasn't.

Engaging vampire story.
Elizabeth Kostova creates in 'The Historian' an atmosphere of vampire, gothic horror that seeps through the very walls of your own house and ensures your own commitment to the chase that is written about in such detail. You might also feel that you need the story to be solved to confirm your own sanity as the fear builds with each and every turn of the page.
I enjoyed getting friendly with each of the characters in the book and appreciated the journey that Kostova took me on around the cities of Europe, especially Istanbul, whilst always feeling that an icy hand was about to reach out for my throat and press gang me into the army of Dracula's living dead.
A real lights on kind of read that thrills and enlightens in equal measure.