The Historian
Encyclopedia
The Historian interweaves the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia
known as "Vlad the Impaler", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula
together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb. The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts: that of Paul's mentor in the 1930s, that of Paul in the 1950s, and that of the narrator herself in the 1970s. The tale is told primarily from the perspective of Paul's daughter, who is never named.
. The narrator finds an old vellum
-bound book with a woodcut
of a dragon in the center associated with Dracula. When she asks her father Paul about it, he tells her how he found the handmade book in his study carrel
when he was a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul took the book to his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, and was shocked to find that Rossi had found a similar handmade book when he was a graduate student in the 1930s. As a result, Rossi researched Ţepeş, the Dracula myth surrounding him, and the mysterious book. Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul
; however, the appearance of curious characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation and return to his graduate work. Rossi gives Paul his research notes and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive.
The bulk of the novel focuses on the 1950s timeline, which follows Paul's adventures. After meeting with Paul, Rossi disappears; smears of blood on his desk and the ceiling of his office are the only traces that remain. Certain that something unfortunate has befallen his advisor, Paul begins to investigate Dracula. While in the university library he meets a young, dark-haired woman reading a copy of Bram Stoker
's Dracula
. She is Helen Rossi, the daughter of Bartholomew Rossi, and she has become an expert on Dracula. Paul attempts to convince her that one of the librarians is trying to prevent their research into Dracula, but she is unpersuaded. Later, the librarian attacks and bites Helen. Paul intervenes and overpowers him, but he wriggles free. The librarian is then run over by a car in front of the library and apparently killed.
Upon hearing her father's story, the narrator becomes interested in the mystery and begins researching Dracula as she and her father travel across Europe during the 1970s. Although he eventually sends her home, she does not remain there. After finding letters addressed to her that reveal he has left on a quest to find her mother (previously believed to be dead), she sets out to find him. As is slowly made clear in the novel, Helen is the narrator's mother. The letters continue the story her father has been telling her. The narrator decides to travel to a monastery where she believes her father might be.
Mehmed II, which Paul believes contain information regarding the location of the tomb. They fortuitously meet Professor Turgut Bora from Istanbul University
, who has also discovered a book similar to Paul's and Rossi's. He has access to Mehmed's archive, and together they unearth several important documents. They also see the librarian who was supposedly killed in the United States – he has survived because he is a vampire and he has continued following Helen and Paul. Helen shoots the vampire librarian but misses his heart and consequently, he does not die.
From Istanbul, Paul and Helen travel to Budapest
, Hungary, to further investigate the location of Dracula's tomb and to meet with Helen's mother, who they believe may have knowledge of Rossi – the two had met during his travels to Romania
in the 1930s. For the first time Helen hears of her mother and Rossi's torrid love affair. Paul and Helen learn much, for example that Helen's mother, and therefore Helen herself and the narrator, are descendants of Vlad Ţepeş.
. He also reveals that he is part of an organization formed by Sultan Mehmed II from the elite of the Janissaries to fight the Order of the Dragon
, an evil consortium later associated with Dracula. In Bulgaria, Helen and Paul seek the assistance of a scholar named Anton Stoichev. Through information gained from Stoichev, Helen and Paul discover that Dracula is most likely buried in the Bulgarian monastery of Sveti Georgi.
After many difficulties Paul and Helen discover the whereabouts of Sveti Georgi. Upon reaching the monastery they find Rossi's interred body in the crypt and are forced to drive a silver dagger through his heart to prevent his full transformation into a vampire. Before he dies, he reveals that Dracula is a scholar and has a secret library. Rossi has written an account of his imprisonment in this library and hidden it there. Paul and Helen are pursued to the monastery by political officials and by the vampire librarian – all of them are seeking Dracula's tomb, but it is empty when they arrive.
Paul and Helen move to the United States, marry, and Helen gives birth to the narrator. However, she becomes depressed a few months afterwards. She later confesses that she feared the taint of the vampiric bite that she acquired earlier would infect her child. The family travels to Europe in an attempt to cheer her up. When they visit the monastery Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, Helen feels Dracula's presence and is compelled to jump off a cliff. Landing on grass, she survives and decides to hunt him down and kill him in order to rid herself of his threat and her fears.
When the narrator arrives at Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, she finds her father. Individuals mentioned throughout the 1970s timeline converge in a final attempt to defeat Dracula. He is seemingly killed by a silver bullet fired into his heart by Helen.
In the epilogue, which takes place in 2008, the narrator attends a conference of medievalists in Philadelphia, and stops at a library with an extensive collection of material related to Dracula. She accidentally leaves her notes and the attendant rushes out and returns them to her, as well as a book with a dragon printed in the center, revealing that either Dracula is still alive or one of his minions is imitating the master.
legend began with the stories her father told her about the vampire when she was a child. The family moved from the U.S. to Ljubljana
, Slovenia
in 1972, while her father was teaching for a year at a local university. During that year, the family traveled across Europe. According to Kostova, "It was the formative experience of my childhood." She "was fascinated by [her father's Dracula stories] because they were ... from history in a way, even though they weren't about real history, but I heard them in these beautiful historic places." Kostova's interest in books and libraries began early as well. Her mother, a librarian, frequently took her and her sisters to the public library – they were each allowed to check out 30 books and had a special shelf for their library books.
She listened to recordings of Balkan folk music
as a child and became interested in the tradition. Later, she sang in and directed a Slavic chorus while an undergraduate at Yale University
. She and some friends traveled to Eastern Europe
in 1989, specifically Bulgaria
and Bosnia, to study local musical customs. The recordings they made will be deposited in the Library of Congress
. While Kostova was in Europe, the Berlin Wall
collapsed, heralding the fall
of Communism
in Eastern Europe, events which shaped her understanding of history.
Five years later, in 1994, when Kostova was hiking in the Appalachian Mountains
with her husband, she had a flashback to those storytelling moments with her father and asked herself "what if the father were spinning his Dracula tales to his entranced daughter and Dracula were listening in? What if Dracula were still alive?" She immediately scratched out seven pages of notes into her writer's notebook. Two days later, she started work on the novel. At the time she was teaching English as a second language, creative writing and composition classes at universities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
. She moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan
, entered the writing program at the University of Michigan
and finished the book as she was obtaining her Master of Fine Arts
degree.
Kostova did extensive research about Eastern Europe and Vlad Ţepeş. She found a vampire-killing kit at the Mercer Museum
, which included a pistol, silver
bullets, a crucifix
, a wooden stake, and powdered garlic. As she was writing, she posted maps of Eastern Europe in her office and constructed a chart to help her keep track of the book's timelines. Her husband, whom she had met in Bulgaria, assisted her with related geographical descriptions and diction. It took her ten years to finish the novel.
Kostova finished the novel in January 2004 and sent it to a potential literary agent
in March. Two months later and within two days of sending out her manuscript to publishers, Kostova was offered a deal – she refused it. The rights to the book were auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company
bought them for (US$30,000 is typical for a first novel from an unknown author). Publishers Weekly
explained the high price as a result of a bidding war between firms' believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code
within their grasp. One vice-president and associate publisher said, "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become." Little, Brown and Company subsequently sold the rights in 28 countries. The book was published in the United States on June 14 2005.
, the adventure novel
, the detective novel
, the travelogue
, the postmodern historical novel
, the epistolary epic
, and the historical thriller.
Kostova wanted to write a serious literary novel, with scholarly heroes, that was at the same time reminiscent of 19th-century adventures. She was inspired by Victorian
writers such as Wilkie Collins
; his novel The Moonstone
(1868), with its plot twists and bevy of narrators, was "a major model". The primary literary ancestor of The Historian, however, is Bram Stoker
's Dracula
(1897). For example, in The Historian and Dracula, the protagonist is both fascinated and repulsed by Dracula. Both are told through a series of letters and memoirs. The Historian also includes many intertextual references to Stoker's work – Dracula even owns a copy of the novel. Yet, Kostova shapes Dracula into her own character. While Stoker's vampire is the focus of his novel, Kostova's is at the edges. Moreover, the blend of the fictional Dracula and the historical Vlad "adds a sinister and frightening edge" to the character, according to scholar Stine Fletcher.
Despite its Gothic roots, The Historian is not suffused with violence nor is it a horror novel. Kostova aimed to write a "chilling" Victorian ghost story, and her realistic
style is what creates this effect. Marlene Arpe of The Toronto Star praises Kostova's imagery in particular, quoting the following passage:
As Peter Bebergal explains in The Boston Globe
, "Instead of fetishizing blood, Kostova fetishizes documents (manuscripts, maps, letters) and the places that house them (libraries, archives and monasteries)." As one critic explains, "the real horror rests in the possibility of what Dracula truly is". For example, the narrator comments:
The novel's tone
and structure place it within the serious literary tradition for which Kostova was aiming. For example, the alternating timelines are suggestive of A. S. Byatt
's Possession (1990) and the intermingling of academia and the occult
suggests Arturo Perez-Reverte
's The Club Dumas
(1993). Although many reviewers compared The Historian to Dan Brown
's historical thriller The Da Vinci Code
(2003), Kostova has said her book "is part of a tradition where literary craft and experiments in form are all as important as action ... the only overlap is this idea of people searching for something in history. I'm still surprised when people make this comparison, I'm very grateful my publisher has never pushed it." Moreover, the only real historical personage in her novel is Vlad Ţepeş and she changed the name of some locations "fearing some readers might confuse fantasy and reality, as they have with Brown's novels".
Reviewers praised Kostova's lush descriptions of the setting and the fascinating European cities and countries which the story traverses: Amsterdam, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Oxford, Switzerland and Italy.
History and questions about its role in society pervade The Historian. In particular, the novel argues that knowledge of history is power, particularly as it is written in books. The title can refer to any of the major characters, including Dracula. As Nancy Baker explains in The Globe and Mail
, the novel is "about the love of books" and the knowledge and comfort they offer the characters – even Dracula himself is a bibliophile. As one critic explains, the novel is specifically about the love of scholarship. At the heart of the novel is an exploration of "the power and price of scholarly obsession". As Paul explains in the novel:
The novel explores questions of good and evil and as Jessica Treadway states in The Chicago Tribune, it "is intriguing for its thorough examination of what constitutes evil and why it exists". For example, Dracula at one point asks Rossi:
As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history." For example, he is shown influencing Eastern European tyrants and supporting national socialism in Transylvania
. He is "vainglorious, vindictive, [and] vicious". As Michael Dirda explains in The Washington Post
, the novel conveys the idea that "Most of history's worst nightmares result from an unthinking obedience to authority, high-minded zealotry seductively overriding our mere humanity." It is in the figure of the vampire that Kostova reveals this, since "our fear of Dracula lies in the fear of losing ourselves, of relinquishing our very identities as human beings". In fact, the narrator is never named in the novel, suggesting, as one critic explains, "that the quest for the dark side of human nature is more universal than specific to a concrete character".
Religion is also a dominant theme of The Historian. Dracula is Christian and, as Bebergal explains, "Much of what is frightening in the novel is the suggestion of heretical Christian practices and conspiratorial monks." Kostova herself notes that the world is still "wracked by religious conflict", therefore historical fiction about the topic is relevant. The portions of the novel set in Istanbul
, for example, highlight the extent to which the real Vlad detested the Ottomans
, waging holy war upon them. More specifically, Amir Taheri in Asharq Alawsat
argues that the novel highlights the relationship between the West and Turkey
. The West, which is laden with the "dead" weight of this past (represented by the vampires) needs the help of Turkey (and perhaps the entire Muslim world) to recover. As Taheri points out, one of the most appealing characters in the novel is Professor Bora, a Turkish professor who is part of an ancient Ottoman society dedicated to defeating Dracula. Taheri emphasizes that the novel highlights that "Western civilisation and Islam have common enemies represented by 'vampires' such as postmodernism in Europe and obscurantism in the Muslim world".
called a "carefully calibrated advertising campaign", 7,000 advance copies were sent to booksellers, and in January 2005 Kostova began her book promotion tour six months before the novel's publication. She met with book retailers who, impressed with her presentation, bought large numbers of the book. As an article in The Age
explains, "By the time it arrived in the bookstores, The Historian had already made the news several times". As soon as the book was published in June, Kostova went on a 15-city tour, including book signings and readings, which prompted further media reports on it. She appeared on ABC's
Good Morning America
on 28 June, and there were stories about the novel in USA Today
, Entertainment Weekly
and Newsweek
. Kostova was billed as the next literary phenomenon, the next Alice Sebold
or Susanna Clarke
.
The Historian was the first debut novel to land at number one on The New York Times bestseller list
in its first week on sale, and as of 2005 was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in U.S. history. The book sold more copies on its first day in print than The Da Vinci Code – 70,000 copies were sold in the first week alone. As of the middle of August 2005, the novel had already sold 915,000 copies in the U.S. and had gone through six printings. (For comparison, according to Publishers Weekly
, only ten fiction books sold more than 800,000 hardcover copies in the US in 2004.) Little, Brown and Company also released an edition of Dracula in September 2005 with an introduction by Kostova, thinking her readers would want to delve into the original novel after reading hers. Kostova is one of the few female bestselling authors, but her popularity is unusual because it is founded on a literary novel.
Reviews of the novel were "at best, mixed". Several reviewers noted that Kostova described the setting of her novel well; Laura Miller of Salon.com
, for example, wrote that "Kostova has a genius for evoking places". Malcolm Jones of Newsweek
wrote that the novel was "strikingly fresh and unformulaic". Baker praised Kostova's prose, saying that it "has a leisurely grace". Francis Atkinson of The Age
praised the "Gothic sensuality" of the novel. However, some thought the book was too long, or criticized Kostova's lack of tonal variety; Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times
that the book was "ponderous" and had a "contorted narrative structure". Jane Stevenson of The Observer
agreed, noting that the multiple timelines and narrators of the novel were not sufficiently differentiated. Several reviewers complained that the climax
of the novel was a disappointment and that Dracula was not terrifying.
According to Paul Wagenbreth of The News-Gazette, the novel's fundamental weakness is that after the slow buildup, "there is a final shying away from a full rendering of the nature of the beast. ... there's a curious holding back here as elsewhere from a really probing look at the seductive appeal of vampirism, particularly the sensuality at its core." Susanna Sturgis, agreed, writing in the Women's Review of Books that the plot dragged and that "the reader loses interest" in the core mysteries of the novel. Ong Sor Fern of The Straits Times
criticized Kostova's portrayal of women, writing that her unnamed female narrator "feels even more drab and colourless than Stoker's idealised female, Mina Harker". Sturgis criticized Kostova's characterization in general, contending that the major characters seemed more like "disembodied tour guides". Polly Shulman of Newsday
also argued that the book "fail[s] to grapple with its supposed themes: evil, death and history". She saw "little of the terror of these periods" in the novel and little of the tension between the Islamic East and the Christian West.
, is narrated by six different actors (Joanne Whalley
, Martin Jarvis, Dennis Boutsikaris
, Jim Ward
, Rosalyn Landor
and Robin Atkin Downes
). Boutsikaris' voicing of Paul has been called "flat" while Publishers Weekly
complained that it was "nonchalant and impersonal". They also singled out the voicing of Dracula for criticism, writing that "his accent and delivery is exactly the stereotypical vampire voice used by everyone from Bela Lugosi
to Sesame Street
's the Count
". There is swelling orchestral music at the beginning and end of each chapter, of which the reviewers approved.
The 26-hour unabridged audio book, released by Books on Tape (a division of Random House
), is narrated by Justine Eyre and Paul Michael
. According to Booklist
, they "do an incredible job voicing an array of characters with European accents ranging from Dutch, French, and German". Noting that the book is particularly suited for audio because it is told in letters, they praise Eyre's "earnest and innocent" tone in her voicing of the narrator and Michael's "clear characterizations".
bought the film rights to the novel for . Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher are producing the film and Brad Caleb Kane is writing the screenplay. Asked about the adaptation, Kostova has said: "I have tried very hard not to imagine who would play my characters. They're my old friends and I want to keep imagining them as they were. ... And I also haven't stated any preferences in public because I want my readers to have the same bond with them. But I have received so many stellar suggestions that I actually collected them all and wrote them down and gave them to the studio. ... Something I feel certain about is that Dracula should not be played by a familiar face because it's just not that scary; there's not the true strangeness you'll need in a figure like that with a famous actor."
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
known as "Vlad the Impaler", and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
together with the story of Paul, a professor; his 16-year-old daughter; and their quest for Vlad's tomb. The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts: that of Paul's mentor in the 1930s, that of Paul in the 1950s, and that of the narrator herself in the 1970s. The tale is told primarily from the perspective of Paul's daughter, who is never named.
Part I
Part I opens in 1972 AmsterdamAmsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. The narrator finds an old vellum
Vellum
Vellum is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, codices or books. It is generally smooth and durable, although there are great variations depending on preparation, the quality of the skin and the type of animal used...
-bound book with a woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
of a dragon in the center associated with Dracula. When she asks her father Paul about it, he tells her how he found the handmade book in his study carrel
Carrel desk
A carrel desk is a small desk featuring high sides meant to visually isolate its user from any surroundings either partially or totally. They were a predecessor to the more recent cubicle desk.- Description :...
when he was a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul took the book to his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, and was shocked to find that Rossi had found a similar handmade book when he was a graduate student in the 1930s. As a result, Rossi researched Ţepeş, the Dracula myth surrounding him, and the mysterious book. Rossi traveled as far as Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
; however, the appearance of curious characters and unexplained events caused him to drop his investigation and return to his graduate work. Rossi gives Paul his research notes and informs him that he believes Dracula is still alive.
The bulk of the novel focuses on the 1950s timeline, which follows Paul's adventures. After meeting with Paul, Rossi disappears; smears of blood on his desk and the ceiling of his office are the only traces that remain. Certain that something unfortunate has befallen his advisor, Paul begins to investigate Dracula. While in the university library he meets a young, dark-haired woman reading a copy of Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
's Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
. She is Helen Rossi, the daughter of Bartholomew Rossi, and she has become an expert on Dracula. Paul attempts to convince her that one of the librarians is trying to prevent their research into Dracula, but she is unpersuaded. Later, the librarian attacks and bites Helen. Paul intervenes and overpowers him, but he wriggles free. The librarian is then run over by a car in front of the library and apparently killed.
Upon hearing her father's story, the narrator becomes interested in the mystery and begins researching Dracula as she and her father travel across Europe during the 1970s. Although he eventually sends her home, she does not remain there. After finding letters addressed to her that reveal he has left on a quest to find her mother (previously believed to be dead), she sets out to find him. As is slowly made clear in the novel, Helen is the narrator's mother. The letters continue the story her father has been telling her. The narrator decides to travel to a monastery where she believes her father might be.
Part II
Part II begins as the narrator reads descriptions of her father and Helen's travels through Eastern Europe during the 1950s. While on their travels, Helen and Paul conclude that Rossi might have been taken by Dracula to his tomb. They travel to Istanbul to find the archives of SultanSultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
Mehmed II, which Paul believes contain information regarding the location of the tomb. They fortuitously meet Professor Turgut Bora from Istanbul University
Istanbul University
Istanbul University is a Turkish university located in Istanbul. The main campus is adjacent to Beyazıt Square.- Synopsis :A madrasa, a religious school, was established sometime in the 15th century after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. An institution of higher education named the...
, who has also discovered a book similar to Paul's and Rossi's. He has access to Mehmed's archive, and together they unearth several important documents. They also see the librarian who was supposedly killed in the United States – he has survived because he is a vampire and he has continued following Helen and Paul. Helen shoots the vampire librarian but misses his heart and consequently, he does not die.
From Istanbul, Paul and Helen travel to Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Hungary, to further investigate the location of Dracula's tomb and to meet with Helen's mother, who they believe may have knowledge of Rossi – the two had met during his travels to Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
in the 1930s. For the first time Helen hears of her mother and Rossi's torrid love affair. Paul and Helen learn much, for example that Helen's mother, and therefore Helen herself and the narrator, are descendants of Vlad Ţepeş.
Part III
Part III begins with a revelation by Turgut Bora that leads the search for Dracula's tomb to BulgariaBulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
. He also reveals that he is part of an organization formed by Sultan Mehmed II from the elite of the Janissaries to fight the Order of the Dragon
Order of the Dragon
The Order of the Dragon was a monarchical chivalric order for selected nobility,founded in 1408 by Sigismund, King of Hungary and later Holy Roman Emperor The Order of the Dragon (Latin Societas Draconistrarum) was a monarchical chivalric order for selected nobility,founded in 1408 by Sigismund,...
, an evil consortium later associated with Dracula. In Bulgaria, Helen and Paul seek the assistance of a scholar named Anton Stoichev. Through information gained from Stoichev, Helen and Paul discover that Dracula is most likely buried in the Bulgarian monastery of Sveti Georgi.
After many difficulties Paul and Helen discover the whereabouts of Sveti Georgi. Upon reaching the monastery they find Rossi's interred body in the crypt and are forced to drive a silver dagger through his heart to prevent his full transformation into a vampire. Before he dies, he reveals that Dracula is a scholar and has a secret library. Rossi has written an account of his imprisonment in this library and hidden it there. Paul and Helen are pursued to the monastery by political officials and by the vampire librarian – all of them are seeking Dracula's tomb, but it is empty when they arrive.
Paul and Helen move to the United States, marry, and Helen gives birth to the narrator. However, she becomes depressed a few months afterwards. She later confesses that she feared the taint of the vampiric bite that she acquired earlier would infect her child. The family travels to Europe in an attempt to cheer her up. When they visit the monastery Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, Helen feels Dracula's presence and is compelled to jump off a cliff. Landing on grass, she survives and decides to hunt him down and kill him in order to rid herself of his threat and her fears.
When the narrator arrives at Saint-Matthieu-des-Pyrénées-Orientales, she finds her father. Individuals mentioned throughout the 1970s timeline converge in a final attempt to defeat Dracula. He is seemingly killed by a silver bullet fired into his heart by Helen.
In the epilogue, which takes place in 2008, the narrator attends a conference of medievalists in Philadelphia, and stops at a library with an extensive collection of material related to Dracula. She accidentally leaves her notes and the attendant rushes out and returns them to her, as well as a book with a dragon printed in the center, revealing that either Dracula is still alive or one of his minions is imitating the master.
Biographical background
Kostova's interest in the DraculaCount Dracula
Count Dracula is a fictional character, the titular antagonist of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula and archetypal vampire. Some aspects of his character have been inspired by the 15th century Romanian general and Wallachian Prince Vlad III the Impaler...
legend began with the stories her father told her about the vampire when she was a child. The family moved from the U.S. to Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
in 1972, while her father was teaching for a year at a local university. During that year, the family traveled across Europe. According to Kostova, "It was the formative experience of my childhood." She "was fascinated by [her father's Dracula stories] because they were ... from history in a way, even though they weren't about real history, but I heard them in these beautiful historic places." Kostova's interest in books and libraries began early as well. Her mother, a librarian, frequently took her and her sisters to the public library – they were each allowed to check out 30 books and had a special shelf for their library books.
She listened to recordings of Balkan folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
as a child and became interested in the tradition. Later, she sang in and directed a Slavic chorus while an undergraduate at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. She and some friends traveled to Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
in 1989, specifically Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
and Bosnia, to study local musical customs. The recordings they made will be deposited in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. While Kostova was in Europe, the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
collapsed, heralding the fall
Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...
of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in Eastern Europe, events which shaped her understanding of history.
Composition and publication
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
with her husband, she had a flashback to those storytelling moments with her father and asked herself "what if the father were spinning his Dracula tales to his entranced daughter and Dracula were listening in? What if Dracula were still alive?" She immediately scratched out seven pages of notes into her writer's notebook. Two days later, she started work on the novel. At the time she was teaching English as a second language, creative writing and composition classes at universities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. She moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, entered the writing program at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
and finished the book as she was obtaining her Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
degree.
Kostova did extensive research about Eastern Europe and Vlad Ţepeş. She found a vampire-killing kit at the Mercer Museum
Mercer Museum
The Mercer Museum is a museum located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia. The Bucks County Historical Society operates the museum, as well as the Spruance Library and Fonthill, former home of the museum's founder, archeologist Henry Chapman Mercer...
, which included a pistol, silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
bullets, a crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
, a wooden stake, and powdered garlic. As she was writing, she posted maps of Eastern Europe in her office and constructed a chart to help her keep track of the book's timelines. Her husband, whom she had met in Bulgaria, assisted her with related geographical descriptions and diction. It took her ten years to finish the novel.
Kostova finished the novel in January 2004 and sent it to a potential literary agent
Literary agent
A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...
in March. Two months later and within two days of sending out her manuscript to publishers, Kostova was offered a deal – she refused it. The rights to the book were auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
bought them for (US$30,000 is typical for a first novel from an unknown author). Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
explained the high price as a result of a bidding war between firms' believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
within their grasp. One vice-president and associate publisher said, "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become." Little, Brown and Company subsequently sold the rights in 28 countries. The book was published in the United States on June 14 2005.
Genre and style
The Historian has been described as a combination of genres, including the Gothic novelGothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
, the adventure novel
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
, the detective novel
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
, the travelogue
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, the postmodern historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
, the epistolary epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
, and the historical thriller.
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
writers such as Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
; his novel The Moonstone
The Moonstone
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century British epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story was originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie...
(1868), with its plot twists and bevy of narrators, was "a major model". The primary literary ancestor of The Historian, however, is Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula...
's Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
(1897). For example, in The Historian and Dracula, the protagonist is both fascinated and repulsed by Dracula. Both are told through a series of letters and memoirs. The Historian also includes many intertextual references to Stoker's work – Dracula even owns a copy of the novel. Yet, Kostova shapes Dracula into her own character. While Stoker's vampire is the focus of his novel, Kostova's is at the edges. Moreover, the blend of the fictional Dracula and the historical Vlad "adds a sinister and frightening edge" to the character, according to scholar Stine Fletcher.
Despite its Gothic roots, The Historian is not suffused with violence nor is it a horror novel. Kostova aimed to write a "chilling" Victorian ghost story, and her realistic
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
style is what creates this effect. Marlene Arpe of The Toronto Star praises Kostova's imagery in particular, quoting the following passage:
As Peter Bebergal explains in The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, "Instead of fetishizing blood, Kostova fetishizes documents (manuscripts, maps, letters) and the places that house them (libraries, archives and monasteries)." As one critic explains, "the real horror rests in the possibility of what Dracula truly is". For example, the narrator comments:
The novel's tone
Tone (literature)
Tone is a literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, guilty, condescending, or many other possible attitudes...
and structure place it within the serious literary tradition for which Kostova was aiming. For example, the alternating timelines are suggestive of A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...
's Possession (1990) and the intermingling of academia and the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
suggests Arturo Perez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...
's The Club Dumas
The Club Dumas
The Club Dumas is a 1993 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The book is set in a world of antiquarian booksellers echoing his previous work, The Flanders Panel....
(1993). Although many reviewers compared The Historian to Dan Brown
Dan Brown
Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...
's historical thriller The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
(2003), Kostova has said her book "is part of a tradition where literary craft and experiments in form are all as important as action ... the only overlap is this idea of people searching for something in history. I'm still surprised when people make this comparison, I'm very grateful my publisher has never pushed it." Moreover, the only real historical personage in her novel is Vlad Ţepeş and she changed the name of some locations "fearing some readers might confuse fantasy and reality, as they have with Brown's novels".
Reviewers praised Kostova's lush descriptions of the setting and the fascinating European cities and countries which the story traverses: Amsterdam, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Oxford, Switzerland and Italy.
Themes
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
, the novel is "about the love of books" and the knowledge and comfort they offer the characters – even Dracula himself is a bibliophile. As one critic explains, the novel is specifically about the love of scholarship. At the heart of the novel is an exploration of "the power and price of scholarly obsession". As Paul explains in the novel:
The novel explores questions of good and evil and as Jessica Treadway states in The Chicago Tribune, it "is intriguing for its thorough examination of what constitutes evil and why it exists". For example, Dracula at one point asks Rossi:
As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history." For example, he is shown influencing Eastern European tyrants and supporting national socialism in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
. He is "vainglorious, vindictive, [and] vicious". As Michael Dirda explains in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, the novel conveys the idea that "Most of history's worst nightmares result from an unthinking obedience to authority, high-minded zealotry seductively overriding our mere humanity." It is in the figure of the vampire that Kostova reveals this, since "our fear of Dracula lies in the fear of losing ourselves, of relinquishing our very identities as human beings". In fact, the narrator is never named in the novel, suggesting, as one critic explains, "that the quest for the dark side of human nature is more universal than specific to a concrete character".
Religion is also a dominant theme of The Historian. Dracula is Christian and, as Bebergal explains, "Much of what is frightening in the novel is the suggestion of heretical Christian practices and conspiratorial monks." Kostova herself notes that the world is still "wracked by religious conflict", therefore historical fiction about the topic is relevant. The portions of the novel set in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
, for example, highlight the extent to which the real Vlad detested the Ottomans
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, waging holy war upon them. More specifically, Amir Taheri in Asharq Alawsat
Asharq Alawsat
Asharq Al-Awsat is an Arabic international newspaper headquartered in London. A pioneer of the "off-shore" model in the Arabic press, the paper is often noted for its distinctive green-tinted pages....
argues that the novel highlights the relationship between the West and Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. The West, which is laden with the "dead" weight of this past (represented by the vampires) needs the help of Turkey (and perhaps the entire Muslim world) to recover. As Taheri points out, one of the most appealing characters in the novel is Professor Bora, a Turkish professor who is part of an ancient Ottoman society dedicated to defeating Dracula. Taheri emphasizes that the novel highlights that "Western civilisation and Islam have common enemies represented by 'vampires' such as postmodernism in Europe and obscurantism in the Muslim world".
Reception
Little, Brown and Company spent $500,000 heavily promoting The Historian. In what Publishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
called a "carefully calibrated advertising campaign", 7,000 advance copies were sent to booksellers, and in January 2005 Kostova began her book promotion tour six months before the novel's publication. She met with book retailers who, impressed with her presentation, bought large numbers of the book. As an article in The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
explains, "By the time it arrived in the bookstores, The Historian had already made the news several times". As soon as the book was published in June, Kostova went on a 15-city tour, including book signings and readings, which prompted further media reports on it. She appeared on ABC's
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
on 28 June, and there were stories about the novel in USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
and Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
. Kostova was billed as the next literary phenomenon, the next Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold is an American novelist. She has published three books: Lucky , The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon .-Early life:...
or Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke
Susanna Mary Clarke is a British author best known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , a Hugo Award-winning alternate history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time...
.
The Historian was the first debut novel to land at number one on The New York Times bestseller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
in its first week on sale, and as of 2005 was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in U.S. history. The book sold more copies on its first day in print than The Da Vinci Code – 70,000 copies were sold in the first week alone. As of the middle of August 2005, the novel had already sold 915,000 copies in the U.S. and had gone through six printings. (For comparison, according to Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, only ten fiction books sold more than 800,000 hardcover copies in the US in 2004.) Little, Brown and Company also released an edition of Dracula in September 2005 with an introduction by Kostova, thinking her readers would want to delve into the original novel after reading hers. Kostova is one of the few female bestselling authors, but her popularity is unusual because it is founded on a literary novel.
Reviews of the novel were "at best, mixed". Several reviewers noted that Kostova described the setting of her novel well; Laura Miller of Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
, for example, wrote that "Kostova has a genius for evoking places". Malcolm Jones of Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
wrote that the novel was "strikingly fresh and unformulaic". Baker praised Kostova's prose, saying that it "has a leisurely grace". Francis Atkinson of The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
praised the "Gothic sensuality" of the novel. However, some thought the book was too long, or criticized Kostova's lack of tonal variety; Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that the book was "ponderous" and had a "contorted narrative structure". Jane Stevenson of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
agreed, noting that the multiple timelines and narrators of the novel were not sufficiently differentiated. Several reviewers complained that the climax
Climax (narrative)
The Climax is the point in the story where the main character's point of view changes, or the most exciting/action filled part of the story. It also known has the main turning point in the story...
of the novel was a disappointment and that Dracula was not terrifying.
According to Paul Wagenbreth of The News-Gazette, the novel's fundamental weakness is that after the slow buildup, "there is a final shying away from a full rendering of the nature of the beast. ... there's a curious holding back here as elsewhere from a really probing look at the seductive appeal of vampirism, particularly the sensuality at its core." Susanna Sturgis, agreed, writing in the Women's Review of Books that the plot dragged and that "the reader loses interest" in the core mysteries of the novel. Ong Sor Fern of The Straits Times
The Straits Times
The Straits Times is an English language daily broadsheet newspaper based in Singapore currently owned by Singapore Press Holdings . It is the country's highest-selling paper, with a current daily circulation of nearly 400,000...
criticized Kostova's portrayal of women, writing that her unnamed female narrator "feels even more drab and colourless than Stoker's idealised female, Mina Harker". Sturgis criticized Kostova's characterization in general, contending that the major characters seemed more like "disembodied tour guides". Polly Shulman of Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
also argued that the book "fail[s] to grapple with its supposed themes: evil, death and history". She saw "little of the terror of these periods" in the novel and little of the tension between the Islamic East and the Christian West.
Awards
| Award | Year | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Hopwood Award Hopwood Award The Hopwood Awards are a major scholarship program at the University of Michigan, founded by Avery Hopwood.Under the terms of the will of Avery Hopwood, a prominent American dramatist and member of the Class of 1905 of The University of Michigan, one-fifth of Mr. Hopwood's estate was given to the... for Novel-in-progress |
2003 | Winner |
| Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year | 2005 | Winner |
| International Horror Guild International Horror Guild The International Horror Guild was created in 1995 as a way to recognize the achievements of those who create in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy. The IHG presented the International Horror Guild Award. Nancy A. Collins, the founder of the award, felt there was a need for an award granted by... Award for Best Novel |
2005 | Nominated |
| Book Sense 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards -Adult Fiction Honor Books:*Kafka on the Shore: A Novel by Haruki Murakami *The March: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow *Saturday: A Novel by Ian McEwan *Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See... Award for Best Adult Fiction |
2006 | Winner |
Audio book
The 12-hour abridged audio book, released by Time WarnerTime Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
, is narrated by six different actors (Joanne Whalley
Joanne Whalley
-Early life:Whalley was born in Salford but brought up in Stockport where she studied at the Braeside School of Speech and Drama, Marple.Whalley first appeared as a child in How We Used To Live and bit parts in soap operas, especially Coronation Street and Emmerdale...
, Martin Jarvis, Dennis Boutsikaris
Dennis Boutsikaris
Dennis Boutsikaris is an American two-time Obie-Award winning character actor. He is a Broadway Actor and frequent television guest star and leading man in made-for-TV movies...
, Jim Ward
Jim Ward (voice actor)
James Kevin "Jim" Ward is a voice actor who has contributed to a large number of video games and movies. He co-hosts The Stephanie Miller Show, a nationally-syndicated liberal radio talk show which features a number of his impersonations of political figures and other celebrities and newsmakers...
, Rosalyn Landor
Rosalyn Landor
Rosalyn Landor is an English film, television, and stage actress and audio book narrator.-Early life:Landor was born in London. She began her career at the age of seven, when she appeared in the Hammer Horror film The Devil Rides Out .-Career:In 1970 she appeared with Susannah York in Jane Eyre,...
and Robin Atkin Downes
Robin Atkin Downes
Born in London, England, Robin Atkin Downes is an English actor who is one of the most prolific voice-over actors in Los Angeles. He is well known for his work in film, television and voice acting...
). Boutsikaris' voicing of Paul has been called "flat" while Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
complained that it was "nonchalant and impersonal". They also singled out the voicing of Dracula for criticism, writing that "his accent and delivery is exactly the stereotypical vampire voice used by everyone from Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
to Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
's the Count
Count von Count
Count von Count, often known simply as "The Count", is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, performed by Jerry Nelson. The Count is a vampire modeled after Bela Lugosi's interpretation of Count Dracula.-Description:...
". There is swelling orchestral music at the beginning and end of each chapter, of which the reviewers approved.
The 26-hour unabridged audio book, released by Books on Tape (a division of Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
), is narrated by Justine Eyre and Paul Michael
Paul Michael
Paul Michael was an American actor best known for his role as TJ, the hapless boss of a burger bar in children's television show 'Spatz'. He was a regular guest star on American television appearing in Kojak, Hill Street Blues, Alias, Gilmore Girls and Frasier among others. He played a cop in...
. According to Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
, they "do an incredible job voicing an array of characters with European accents ranging from Dutch, French, and German". Noting that the book is particularly suited for audio because it is told in letters, they praise Eyre's "earnest and innocent" tone in her voicing of the narrator and Michael's "clear characterizations".
Film
SonySony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
bought the film rights to the novel for . Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher are producing the film and Brad Caleb Kane is writing the screenplay. Asked about the adaptation, Kostova has said: "I have tried very hard not to imagine who would play my characters. They're my old friends and I want to keep imagining them as they were. ... And I also haven't stated any preferences in public because I want my readers to have the same bond with them. But I have received so many stellar suggestions that I actually collected them all and wrote them down and gave them to the studio. ... Something I feel certain about is that Dracula should not be played by a familiar face because it's just not that scary; there's not the true strangeness you'll need in a figure like that with a famous actor."