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The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova | Goodreads
Elizabeth Kostova was born Elizabeth Z. Johnson in New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she won the 2003 Hopwood Award for her Novel-in-Progress. She is married to a Bulgarian scholar and has taken his family name. The Historian is a big ass book with a lot of detail and a pretty complex plot. It is not easy Sunday reading and requires a good bit of investment to get the rewards from it. It's pretty slow, particularly in the first half, but beautifully written. Kostova's skill at creating mood and atmosphere is certainly impressive and her knowledge on the vampire mythos and medieval history surrounding it is outstanding.a b Susanna J. Sturgis, "Living the Undead Life", Women's Review of Books (Jan/February 2006). Retrieved 20 June 2009. a b c Jane Sullivan, "Dracula and the human factor", The Age (June 3, 2006). LexisNexis (subscription required). Retrieved May 7, 2009. Peter Bebergal, "Literary take on vampires gives 'Historian' bite" (original), The Boston Globe (June 15, 2005). Retrieved May 7, 2009. Archived copy. Further information: Ivan Duichev The Historian is suffused with "the sensual and intellectual pleasures to be found in dusty old libraries, with their leather-bound books and fading maps". [30] It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us.”
Elizabeth Kostova - Wikipedia
Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of – a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history. Scott Shane's outstanding work Flee North tells the little-known tale of an unlikely partnership ... Michael Fleming, "Sony buys rights to 'The Historian'", Variety (16 May 2005). Retrieved 20 May 2013.The novel is told in three parts from the perspective of the narrator, who is the daughter of Paul and Helen. The novel chronicles her adventures with her father Paul in search of Helen, whom they believe to be still alive, as well as the mythical Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula. She is also later revealed to be a descendant of Count Dracula. Bartholomew Rossi In North Carolina a woman saw her being interviewed on television in the morning and came to her reading with a cake. "I thought you might be tired and hungry on your tour so I bought you a cake," she said. She is married to a Bulgarian IT professional and has taken his family name. [ citation needed] Her sister, Victoria Johnson, is also an author. [3] The Historian [ edit ] The Historian tells the history of Vlad Tepes (aka Count Dracula) and the modern story of Paul, a professor, and his sixteen year old daughter (who is unnamed) on their quest to find Vlad's tomb.
The Historian — Elizabeth Kostova
Apart from the basic problem that word-choice, syntactic patterns and cultural assumptions are all clearly American and not English, no young Oxford don would visit the Rare Book Room, since there is no such place; the master of a college would never be referred to as Master James, and the Golden Wolf is a wholly implausible name for an English pub in the Thirties. A denizen of prewar Oxford troubled by occult manifestations would have been talking it over with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien down at the Bird and Baby. The realisation that an American grad student would experience some difficulty travelling in the Soviet bloc in 1951, and that nice girls still wore gloves then, seems to be more or less the limit of the author's historical sense. Am I destined for some kind of literary hell if I say I wish Dan Brown would rewrite this story with the spark and intensity of the Da Vinci Code?
As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history." [3] For example, he is shown influencing Eastern European tyrants and supporting national socialism in Transylvania. [23] He is "vainglorious, vindictive, [and] vicious". [32] 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." [35] 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". [35] 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". [34] 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. a b Jessica Treadway, "Raising the undead", Chicago Tribune (12 June 2005). Access World News (subscription required). Retrieved 10 May 2009.
Bigger than Dan Brown | Books | The Guardian Bigger than Dan Brown | Books | The Guardian
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. The thing that most haunted me that day, however, as I closed my notebook and put my coat on to go home, was not my ghostly image of Dracula, or the description of impalement, but the fact that these things had– apparently– actually occurred. If I listened too closely, I thought, I would hear the screams of the boys, of the 'large family' dying together. 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. [25] 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, [20] and her realistic style is what creates this effect. [25] Marlene Arpe of The Toronto Star praises Kostova's imagery in particular, quoting the following passage: The novel ties together three separate narratives using letters and oral accounts: that of Paul's mentor in the 1930's, that of Paul in the 1950's, and that of the narrator herself in the 1970's. The tale is told primarily from the perspective of Paul's daughter, who is never named. ... Elizabeth Kostova has produced an honorable summer book, reasonably well written and enjoyable and, most important of all, very, very long: One can tote The Historian to the beach, to the mountains, to Europe or to grandmother's house and still be reading its 21st-century coda when Labor Day finally rolls around.
Her father recounts the tale of how he was seduced into the Dracula obsession by his mentor at university. And so it goes on: stories within stories and layers upon layers, spanning several centuries of history, decades of action and numerous richly evoked eastern European cities. "It's partly a travelogue," says Kostova. "And Dracula is partly a vehicle for the history." But then came Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code: a mystery involving an American academic who is caught up in a bookish historical drama with a foreign love interest. Both defensive and generous about the comparison, she does not dismiss it out of hand: "I think it's important to recognise that The Da Vinci Code opened up a vast new audience for a general readership interested in historical detective stories and research into history."
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