Tale focuses on whether Dracula truly still exists in vampire/undead form.

Most of the tale is told through backstory and letters. In itself, this is quite a feat for a novel.

People who appreciate History as well as a mystery with esoteric/intellectual sprinklings will most likely find this tale appealing. There is a great deal of focus on academic types and their personalities as well, so, be sure you want to spend time with such characters.

I found it quite entertaining, and, even though I skimmed certain parts, I kept going all the way through tne novel. That's the impatient side of me, I suppose. Heh. I found the climatic ending a bit off but I won't say more so that spoilers aren't given.

Worthy of best seller ranking though, especially if you appreciate historical details.

Enjoy.

CHARACTERS/DIALOGUE: B to B plus; STORY/PLOTTING: B minus;
DRACULA MYTHOLOGY: B minus; HISTORICAL INPUT: B plus to A minus;
WHEN READ: 2005 (revised review 11/10/2012); OVERALL GRADE: B.

So yeaaaah Dracula turned out to be a total wuss. I mean, he wasn't prepared and got shot and died. How did he live as long as he did? Derp, derp, derp. All that build up for hundreds upon hundreds of pages and he turns out to be a wussbag. Derp much?

This book is impossible to resist. It has fairly leapt to the top shelf, where it's nestled down deep with my all time favourites. I confess to being initially reluctant to delve into this story, I mean who really needs another campy, vampire tale? Lucky for me I put these feelings aside long enough to read the first chapter after which there was no looking back.

Step into the pages and begin an eerie, haunted, hypnotic adventure thoroughly saturated in ancient history and wondrous, exotic, old European churches, monasteries and libraries that are positively brimming with ancient parchment and long, forgotten maps and books. Kostova's historical tracking of the real Vlad Drakulya is flawless and she is able to describe with a chilling, atmospheric eye for detail, the many settings as well as the political climate in which this story unfolds. A full speed ahead rich, historical thriller with enough gothic images, cultural folklore, ancient crypts and creaking stairs that it is sure to raise the hair on the back of your neck and no doubt a compulsive, insatiable interest in this age old tale.

This truly is GREAT fiction!

This novel is better than I had any anticipation of it being. I’d seen it among a friend’s luggage then later saw it at the library. Having just come off three weeks of nineteenth century novelists, I thought, Oh, something light would be a nice change. After all, I thought. Vampires. The book is about vampires. And not just any vampire, but the mack daddy himself, Dracula, the real Vlad the Impaler, who turns out to be the undead.

Light reading. Sure. Six hundred and fifty pages of vampires that is less concerned with torn pulsing arteries than with the minutiae of historical research. And much like Dracula, to which Kostova’ novel The Historian owes an incalculable debt (more so than many another vampire novel), the novel is constructed as a story within a story within a story.

One of the novel’s central conceits is how much of the story is told in the form of letters written by the young female narrator’s father. As this sum surpasses well over 300 pages in type, obvious plausibility considerations of scale arise, but only if you stop to think about it long enough. In the middle of the father Paul’s letters, he is handed a parcel of letters written by his mentor, Bartolomeo Rossi which are also substantially sized documents.

As their stories take them further and further into Eastern and Central Europe, the texts begin to shelter one inside the other inside the other like Russian nesting dolls. As the narrator reads the letters of her father, Paul tells of visiting a Bulgarian scholar who reads to him from a manuscript which includes in its history yet another person’s lengthy transcription of in fact one more person’s reminisces about Vlad Tepes. This kind of layered story is most definitely part of Kostova’s novel’s sensibility, and it’s rather an amusing in-joke.

What’s impressive about all this is how Kostova weaves three sizable narratives together, alternating time and place and narrative voice. We first are in Amsterdam of 1972 as our young narrator, a sixteen year old school girl, tells of discovering a mysterious volume in her diplomat father’s office and later of her journey to France. Part of what sends her out are the letters she is reading left to her by her father after he vanishes, telling of his travels and investigations into the Dracula legend in the 1950s Eastern Bloc. He is launched across the Soviet empire as well as through the byzantine mazes of Istanbul’s streets and libraries trying to discover what became of his missing mentor. Along the way as we try to find Rossi, we are told of his 1930s investigations into the Dracula legend in Romania.

On top of that, there are vast stores of erudition on fifteenth century monasteries, the cultural divide betwixt Romanians and Transylvanians, the Walechian court, medieval church politics, central European folk songs, Bulgarian religious rituals based around old pagan traditions, historian cataloging and research methodology, and the overlapping history of Central Europe with its shifting rulers of Ottomans, the Orthodox church and its tiny fiefdoms, and the Soviet Union. For, thinking about it as an historian, the undead would have lived through an impressive array of eras.

Consider this rather late passage:

The “Chronicle” of Zacharias is known through two manuscripts, Athos 1480 and R.VII.132; the latter is also referred to as the “Patriarchal Version.” Athos 1480, a quarto manuscript in a single semiunical hand, is house in the library at Rila Monastery in Bulgaria, where it was discovered in 1923…This original manuscript was probably housed in the Zographou library until at least 1814, since it is mentioned by title in a bibliography of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts at Zographou dating from that year. It resurfaced in Bulgaria in 1923, when the Bulgarian historian Atanas Angelov discovered it hidden in the cover of an eighteenth-century folio treatise on the life of Saint George (Georgi 1364.21) in the library at Rila Monastery….The second and only other known copy or version of the Zacharias “Chronicle” — R.VII.132 or the “Patriarchal Version” — is housed at the library of the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople and has been paleographically dated to the mid- or late sixteenth century.


Not your average vampire book, eh?

And that’s one of the funny things about reading this novel. At times, you have to remind yourself that this is a book about vampires. Not that Kostova won’t remind you at some point along the way herself, but that there is so much enjoyable writing throughout, so much fun detective work, that at times the supernatural element seems almost decidedly secondary.

Kostova knows well enough to keep the monsters off the stage as long as possible, merely make suggestive shadows lurk here and there on the periphery and affect a rather creepy atmosphere. After a point there are a hair too many overt murders that sap some of the menace, surprisingly, as they make the gathering darkness all too palpably concrete. Then there are a number of vampire staples that might turn up normally anyway. A bat flitters across a night sky. In the woods near a ruin, a wolf approaches the edge of the firelight. After sitting for some time near a railing cobby with webs, Helen Rossi, daughter of Paul’s mentor and mother to the unnamed young narrator, ends up with an enormous spider on her back. These stand-ins for the vampire are pleasantly unsettling without being accompanied by shrieking violins.

What propels each of the main characters, the young girl (whose name we never discover), her father Paul, and his mentor, Rossi, is the discovery of a mysterious old book among their own, a book with one printed page, that of a dragon with a banner reading “Drakulya” while the rest of the pages are blank. Throughout the novel we find that each character who has become obsessed with the legend of Vlad Tepes possesses a similar book that came to them under curious circumstances. Why and how these volumes keep turning up is one of the novel's mysteries an it's one of Kostova's rather clever conclusions in her own well-thought out realization of the character of Dracula. And there is throughout the book an enormous cast of characters, not merely just historical personages, but various researchers and students and librarians and bureaucrats and all of them are well-drawn, interesting, and fully fleshed.

We know, of course, from the very beginning, before the narrator even informs us, that when her father Paul speaks of a young beauty named Helen who he meets while trying to track down his missing mentor, that this will be the overtly absent mother of the young narrator. And, of course, since she is absent, we know there is a reason for that, and of course, as this is a horror novel, we know she is dead — or worse. Kostova manages to keep even that particularly familiar angle surprising. The author is at least a thorough-going plotter and she paces everything beautifully, setting up revelations with periodic sparks. All three story lines converge some hundred pages out from the novel’s end and from there the story picks up and aims squarely toward its conclusion.

The actual climax of the novel as our heroes close in on Dracula and his daytime resting place seems rather rushed, ending just all abruptly as if Kostova had opted just to skip overt dramatics, which feels a bit of a cheat, though she does make up for this lack of action with a final pages reversal that is as unsettling as it is quiet.

Let me preface all I have to say about this book, by saying that I had started this book a number of times and of course never continued with it. The Historian is a massive tome on the existence of Dracula. Unlike Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Historian gives a authentic name to Dracula and that is Vlad Tempes (Vlad the Impaler) and makes him into the ever evil Count. The book tells of three generation's search and eventual finding of Dracula. It follows the family through assorted countries very connected with the legend and throws a considerable amount of folklore into the mix. It is massive in it depth and quite wordy as the novel is mostly told through letters and the interaction of the characters. I have read that the author took ten years to write this book and it shows in its depth of plot development.

Given the topic, the tome is eerie but I never did find it scary. It was written as a history book of sorts and although the main character is the evil Dracula, one does not really meet him until the end which I felt was the best part of the book. We follow our heroes (the historians) through the countries of Holland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, and London as they try individually to piece together the legend and eventually come to the understanding that this evil menace is still "alive" Eventually the forces unite, and Vlad is fleshed out and done away with.

While I certainly enjoyed the book, I felt that there was just too much to the story. One never did feel that kind of horror one feels when reading Dracula, and although the atmosphere was dark, Miss Kosova was never able to come close to Stoker's descriptive manner in his most famous tale. I, personally could not get close to the characters and felt they withheld themselves in that typically old European style, which of course makes sense given the locale. Religious matters were presented with an eye to the concept that sometimes the church not only condones but encourages evil as a means to an end.

The book to my way of thinking, more dealt with the amount of evil present in the world of the both the past and the present. This search for Dracula is quite long and not an easy read. One must concentrate on the narrative and the author drifted from character to character sometimes within the chapter itself.

All in all, it was a satisfying book, certainly not one that was able to be read in a weekend, but a good attempt at giving a real being to the character of Dracula. If you like the current wave of vampirism that seems to be sweeping the current book times, you might want to pick up this novel. It is certainly no Twilight and definitely not Dracula, but it does hold appeal to those of us who feel that there are aways evil forces afoot in the world.

„Прелистих книгата — човек, който по цял ден се рови в книги, посреща всяка нова книга като приятел, дори като изкушение...“


„Историкът“ е разкошен роман! Той представлява мрачна вампирска история, но е изключително красиво и увлекателно написан, та неусетно го прочетох и не ми се искаше да свършва. Елизабет Костова е създала превъзходна готическа атмосфера, разказвайки за вълнуващи приключения, свързани с легендарния Влад Дракула. Действието се развива в различни държави, като настоящите премеждия са елегантно съчетани с любопитни ретроспекции... След време определено ще се завръщам към това книжно съкровище!




„Беше ми приятно отново да вляза в библиотека, миришеше ми като у дома. Тази библиотека беше неокласическа съкровищница, цялата в тъмно резбовано дърво, с балкони, галерии и стенописи. Очите ми обаче бяха приковани от редиците книги, стотици хиляди книги, опасващи стените от пода до тавана, безупречни редички от червени, кафяви и позлатени корици, с твърдите им като мрамор подвързии и гладките форзаци, с ��рапавите прешлени на гърбовете им, кафяви като стари кости. Чудех се къде ли са ги крили по време на войната и колко дълго е трябвало отново да ги редят по възстановените лавици.“

Whoa.. I just finished this book about five minutes ago and I'm still processes all of it. Let me just say, The Historian is not an easy read nor a quick one - but it is certainly worth the trouble. Seriously, pick this book up.

I don't wan't to give anything away with this one, purely because one of the most beautiful things about this book is its ability to keep you thinking the entire time. Each chapter, every letter, my mind was constantly trying to put things together because i was genuinely curious to know what was going on. (Did I mention that half the time you'll have no idea what's going on?)

Let me also applaud Elizabeth Kostova's obvious and brilliant research. Throughout the entire book, I kept thinking about how much research she had to do for this book to make sense, and it did not disappoint. Everything was nearly perfect, with the exception of a few paragraphs I had to re-read to fully understand.

The only real negative would be that sometimes I did find myself slightly bored (though, not for long). However, the biggest negative is that this is Kostova's only book! I really enjoyed her writing and would love to see what other historical fiction stories she can come up with. [EDIT 2019: It's actually not her only book! I don't know what I was talking about. She has two others!]

Overall, it was a pleasantly challenging book. One of the few books that kept me up late into the night.

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What could have been the perfect historical mystery for bibliophiles ended up being an unnecessarily long-winded and frequently dull novel.

“Looking up from my work, I suddenly realized that someone had left a book whose spine I had never seen before among my own textbooks, which sat on a shelf above my desk. The spine of this new book showed an elegant little dragon, green on pale leather.”

The Historian alludes to a variety of works, sometimes by means of subtle allusions, while in other cases Elizabeth Kostova seems to be emphasise her own novel’s intertextuality, such as its ostensible intertextual relationship to Stoker’s Dracula.
While Dracula has come to represent a turning point in vampire literature, hailing it as the ‘original vampire novel’ means disregarding the earlier encounters with vampires of other writers such as Goethe, Byron, Le Fanu, and Polidori. Although the ‘romantic’ and ‘seductive’ vampires populating today’s media don’t seem to owe much to Bram Stoker’s hairy-palmed Dracula, he has become an intrinsic part of vampire culture (if not a synonym of vampirism itself). While vampires are inherently intertextual beings (readers know more or less what to expect when reading a vampire novel) I was hoping that Elizabeth Kostova would not relegate her version of Dracula to the sidelines of her story...which sadly seems to be the case. Kostova, even more than Stoker, pushes Dracula, otherwise known as Vlad Țepeș, to the margins of her narrative.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Historian is its supernatural ambience and the stylistic strength of Kostova’s writing as she deftly weaves together folklore and history in what is neither a carbon-copy of nor a sequel to Dracula. Kostova’s story is an amalgamation of genres: a work of Gothic that largely relies on the epistolary form, a detective novel that is equal parts adventure, travelogue, and history lesson. Through these various styles Kostova examines the often conflictual relationship between Christian West and the Islamic East.
Kostova’s re-elaboration of the myths and stories established by works such as Dracula reflects a divided Europe. She examines themes of immortality, monstrosity, and otherness, against a backdrop of quiet social upheaval. Paul and Helen’s quest to find Dracula/Vlad’s tomb is often impeded by the political atmosphere of the countries they visit. Paul in particular, being American, is regarded with suspicion by these countries' socialist regimes. This added another layer of secretiveness to their ‘adventures’, one that forces them to carry out their true research under a guise.

While we do get an overall biography of Vlad Țepeș, the ‘man’ himself does not recount his own experiences, we don’t see from his own point of view. His potential victims inform us of his misdeeds and history...which serve to make Vlad into a rather one-sided character. He is ‘evil’, and that seems to be that. I was expecting a far more nuanced portrayal of vampires and of this infamous historical figure. Terrible people/creatures can still be compelling subjects. Kostova’s novel however does not really allow this vilified figure the chance to speak his truth. I could have understood his motivations without necessarily agreeing with them. Sadly, Vlad seems evil for the sake of being evil. We learn of his monstrous actions but we never truly glimpse the mind behind those brutal deeds. Vlad is evil because of his transgression of the natural order...and that’s it. Vampirism aside Kostova’s depiction of Vlad does not really propose any new ‘reading’ of his rule.

While I really appreciated the use of different timelines in Kostova's latest novel, The Shadow Land, here the various storylines were rather uneven: in the 1970s our narrator is a sixteen-year old girl who remains unnamed throughout the course of the novel, her father Paul (his story takes place in the 1950s), and Paul's former mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi (most of his letters are dated from the 1930s). Initially I thought that the narrative would mainly switch between Paul and his daughter...so I was rather disappointed to discover that the daughter's story is non-existent. She appears at the beginning of this bulky book and has a few chapters here and there...and that's it. Paul's story is the main focus of the narrative, and sadly I just wasn't all that taken by him or his adventures. Him and Helen definitely travel through interesting cities and places (Turkey, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, France) and I did appreciate Kostova's use of the sublime in these 'travelogue' sections: the way in which the landscapes inspires fear and awe in Paul (these sections reminded me of Ann Radcliffe).
Sadly Paul and Helen's journey soon grew rather repetitive and predictable. They always seemed to encounter the right people and the right time which definitely struck me as a too coincidental. While I certainly enjoyed reading of the history of the cities they travel through, I wasn't invested in them or their 'quest'.
Perhaps I was hoping for a more emotionally involving story (such as the one in The Shadow Land) but here the characters were largely secondary, if not downright passive, and while there were plenty of opportunities to flesh them out, to give us an impression of their personalities, their 'quest' has far more importance.
The 'quest' largely relies on their finding documents or people who know something about Dracula's existence. They gather information slowly, over the course of hundred and hundred of pages. A lot of what they 'discover' wasn't all that surprising...the ending felt anti-climatic to the extreme.
Nevertheless, in spite of my not so great opinion of this novel, I did appreciate Kostova's subject matter and her confluence of classicism and romanticism, of logic and emotion, of mysticism and faith. Last but not least, I have always loved descriptions of books and libraries...

“Besides, you can tell a great deal from a historian's books.”

I am freaked out by how much I love this book. It’s an old-fashioned, can’t-turn-the-pages-fast-enough swashbuckler told through letters, diary entries, postcards, and reminiscences. It combines history, romance, adventure, and an abiding love of books – and there are secrets among secrets among secrets. Deliciously mysterious! Much of the action takes place in libraries and on trains… and the characters travel to mysterious locales – Turkey, Romania, Hungary – to determine if Vlad was really a vampire. The travel descriptions are so evocative, it makes me want to write lengthy letters home from a train somewhere with foreign accents.

This was my third or fourth time reading The Historian, and I thoroughly enjoyed it again. I recently took a trip to Budapest, and it was really fun to read about the places I'd just visited. I was also moved even more than usual by the tenderness and sorrow of some of the scenes... and I'm pretty sure that I just talked two of my favorite people into reading it, too.

I read this book over ten years ago and am so glad I decided to reread it this year. The writing is so lush with detail and is beautifully done. I loved Paul, his sense of purpose, his passion, and his determination to see things through. I loved walking through the rich history this book delves into. It makes me want to visit Budapest and Bulgaria and tour the monasteries and towns there. Helen, I don't know how I feel about her as a character. I like her but disagree with her actions and end up wanting to smack her. I love when an author can make me feel all these emotions. It's a testament to her skills as a writer. I recommend this book to anyone who loves vampires. This is a different take on an old tale and it truly does not disappoint.

The Historian is a standalone historical fiction novel written by Elizabeth Kostova. Yes, it has vampires in it and no, it's not classified as paranormal. Why? Because of Ms. Kostova's attention to historical accuracy, specifically regarding the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler rather than the mythical (and paranormal) Dracula the Vampire. In an online interview, Ms. Kostova stated, “I took a real historical mystery, the question of where Vlad the Impaler is buried–or what became of his remains–and spun out a fictional speculation from there. The other historical events in the book are real ones, carefully researched, although the twentieth-century characters are fictional.”

Personally, I loved how layered this book is. Multiple stories build upon each other in many exotic locations bridging across several centuries. It's a very rich reading experience full of culture, history, adventure, and mystery. This was a beast to read in terms of length, but I was never bored and I remained eager to pick up wherever I left off. If you enjoy historical thrillers, specifically those written in a similar style to Dan Brown, you'll love The Historian. Check it out!

My favorite quote:
“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. And once you’ve seen that truth—really seen it—you can’t look away.”

A bit of trivia: It took Elizabeth Kostova ten years to write The Historian. This was the first debut novel to ever debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Ms. Kostova was initially inspired by her own childhood memories of her father, who was a professor, telling her stories about Dracula.

Me ha encantado! Más que leer un libro sentía como si estuviera viajando. Eso sí, el final un poco apresurado.

Nici cinșpe mii de recenzii nu cred că m-ar fi pregătit pentru acest montagne-russe de idei, senzații și emoții pe care le-am întâlnit în cartea asta!
Înainte de toate, vă spun atât: a fost o carte MIȘTO! Mi-a luat aproape 2 luni s-o citesc, dar nu regret nicio secundă. Mi-era dor rău de tot să mă mai cufund într-o poveste aparent interminabilă, plină de suspans, de mister, de intrigă și... de istorie. Pentru că da, „Colecționarul de istorie” mi-a creat o poftă aproape viscerală să vizitez și eu Hagia Sofia, dar mai ales să reiau în vizor romanele cu tentă istorică. Mi-a redeschis apetitul pentru ele, iar Elizabeth Kostova are toate mulțumirile mele pentru acest lucru!
Apoi, nu pot să nu spun că nu m-aș fi așteptat deloc ca elementul supranatural să fie atât de pregnant în acest roman care, în aparență, e de un interes pur istoric. Iarăși, Kostova a făcut o treabă excelentă din îmbinarea unor elemente aparent incompatibile, dar care luate împreună dau chiar foarte bine. Dracula este mai mult decât o legendă, mai mult decât un mister, mai mult decât un...vampir. Kostova l-a adus la viață într-un mod unic, căruia cu greu îi poți găsi un defect. Povestea este adevărată, și totuși nu este adevărată. Granița dintre real și ireal este spulberată complet, astfel că trebuie să citești cartea fără dubii, fără întrebări. Vei lua lucrurile ca atare, iar totul va fi așa cum trebuie.
Ce pot spune altceva... Personajele au fost foarte bine conturate, povestea a decurs fără poticniri, iar misterul m-a ținut în suspans până la sfârșit de tot. Kostova își plimbă cititorii prin 4 decenii diferite, prin 5 țări diferite (SUA, Anglia, Turcia, Ungaria și Bulgaria) și printr-un adevărat caleidoscop de emoții. Dacă nu este clar deja, recomand din toată inima „Colecționarul de istorie”! Iubitorilor de istorie, și nu numai.