The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elizabeth KostovaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-01
ISBN: 0316154547
Number of pages: 704
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of The Historian
Book Review: Skillful Riff on Dracula Legend
Summary: 5 Stars
Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" is long and discursive, but it's never dull. It's a sprawling, old-fashioned, epistolary novel told in the first person by several different narrators (maybe it's the last Victorian novel we'll ever see). It's a serious novel about the two Draculas--the historical figure and the fictional one--ostensibly compiled by an unnamed female narrator. The author cleverly weaves the historical passages within the more adventuresome parts, and both fascinate. The narrator, now in her mid-50s, is writing in the near future (about 24 seconds from now) about events that took place at three points in the last century--1930, 1954, and 1974. The narrators, in addition to herself, are her father, her father's dissertation adviser, and her mother. This puts the horror at some distance--the creeptastic parts seem to be taking place behind a gauzy scrim.
The author's premise is that the historical Dracula (actually, as the author tells us, the name is the Romanian for Son of the Dragon, or Devil) never died. Worse, he's growing stronger over time. The legend is based on the historical exploits of Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), a late-15th-century prince who ruled with extreme cruelty over the (present-day) Romanian province of Wallachia, which is located just south of Transylvania. His favorite method of execution was to impale his enemies--many of whom were Ottoman Turks who had conquered Constantinople in the middle of the century.
The events are set in motion when Professor Rossi, the narrator's father's dissertation adviser, discovers a bound volume that's empty except for the woodcut of a dragon in the center (several more of them will turn up). And, during the course of the tale, which turns into a hunt to find Dracula's burial place so he can be finished off with the traditional anti-vampire methods, the various characters (and there are many) spend time in Turkey, cold-war Hungary and Romania, and France. Ms. Kostova is brilliant at her descriptions of places (maybe you'll want to visit them after you read the book). And she's good at invoking the horror, too. When the undead Dracula finally turns up (at the book's nasty, brutish, and short conclusion), he's a more than serviceable villain, as well as an intellectual, given by Ms. Kostova the traditional Devil's best lines.
And he only says "good evening" once.
Summary of The Historian
To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge 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 inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known-and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself-to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed-and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign-and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powers-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 relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspenseful-and utterly unforgettable.If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.
As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.
Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler
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