num_pages: 816
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Historian
titlecomplete: The Historian
characters: Hugh James, Evá Orbán, Stephen Barley, ____ Getzi, Anton Stoichev, Vlad III, Helen Rossi, Turgut Bora, Bartholomew Rossi, Paul Ross
genres: Fiction, Historical, Gothic, Mystery, Thriller, Vampires, Horror, Paranormal, Historical Fiction, Fantasy
ratings_count: 262011
places: Budapest, Istanbul, England, Turkey, Hungary, Oxford University, Oxford, England, Netherlands, Amsterdam
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: International Horror Guild Award
category: Best Novel, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Hopwood Award
category: Novel in-progress, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Book Sense Book of the Year Award
category: Best Adult Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: The Quill Award
category: Debut Author of the Year, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Lord Ruthven Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Back Bay Books