The Historian
By Elizabeth Kostova
Little Brown and Company
$25.95 hard cover, 641 pages; ISBN 0-316-01177-0 (2005).
It’s been awhile since I read a book that compelled me to keep turning the pages, that called me when I was doing other things and prompted – no demanded – that I return to its enthralling story. This dazzling novel kept me entertained for days. Unfortunately, it was so powerful that I accomplished little else. Whenever I wasn’t reading it, I was thinking about it. Whenever I was reading it, I was thinking about nothing else.
Elizabeth Kostova’s wonderful debut novel was ten years in the making, and undoubtedly a lifetime of imagining. The publicity release that came with the book revealed that ever since she was a young girl, when her father entertained her with tales of Dracula, she envisioned the story that would become The Historian. This intricate and satisfying tale blends fact and fantasy with the past and the present to weave a suspenseful novel that will mesmerize you. It’s no wonder that Kostova won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress.
The book begins innocently enough. Late one night in 1972, while exploring her father’s library, a 16 year-old American girl (who remains nameless throughout the novel) finds an ancient book and a bunch of yellowing letters. The pages of the undated book are blank, except for a woodcut image of a dragon on the center pages. The first paragraph of the topmost letter is dated December 12, 2020, and reads as follows:
“My dear and unfortunate successor:
“It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself – because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands, but my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir – and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don’t know, but I hope to discover that, eventually – perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events.”
The book and the letters prompt the young woman to ask her father about them, and he gradually tells her stories about his past. The letters themselves recount how Professor Bartholomew Rossi, an historian and mentor to her father, found a similar ancient book with the woodcut of a dragon. The young woman soon discovers that Rossi, and her father, have dedicated their lives to learn the truth about a 15th-century prince from Wallachia (now Romania) named Vlad Dracula – also known as Vlad the Impaler.
The young woman discovers that Professor Rossi in the 1930’s, and her father in the 1950’s, believe that Dracula is still alive. They believe that finding Dracula’s tomb will give them the opportunity to destroy him.
When her father mysteriously disappears, the young woman takes up the challenge to find him and Dracula’s tomb. The story lines of the 30’s, 50’s and 70’s skillfully unfold simultaneously throughout the book. When the stories finally intersect at the end of the novel, the suspense is almost unbearable.
Make no mistake: this story has it all. This is the kind of novel that reminds you once again why you love to read. This is the book you skim a dozen others to get to, just to savor every word. The story is about a loving family, dark secrets, ancient history, uplifting good and barbaric evil. Like all good stories, it’s about a quest that in this case begins in the library at Oxford and expands to Istanbul, Budapest, Bulgaria and, of course, Transylvania.
Combining elements of fact and fiction, the novel is about a true historical figure, Vlad the Impaler, whose name Bram Stoker used for his vampire creation in 1897. In a larger sense, the story is about one of the most powerful and enduring myths of our time: Dracula.
The Historian has already been translated and published in 28 languages. Little Brown paid $2 million for the manuscript and Sony Pictures has purchased the movie rights for $1.5 million (Douglas Wick – of Gladiator fame – is tapped to produce the movie.) For the reader, it will all seem well worth the price. Be prepared to stay up late reading this spell binding novel.
