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The Historian

On sale

7th July 2005

Price: £15.98

Richard & Judy Book Club, 2006

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Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781405501705

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THE SUMPTUOUS INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER – ABRIDGED FOR AUDIO

‘A smart retelling of the Dracula story’ New Yorker

‘Quite extraordinary….Kostova is a natural storyteller….She has refashioned the vampire myth into a compelling contemporary novel, a late-night page-turner’ – San Francisco Chronicle

Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family’s past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe-in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world.

‘Filled with fascinating details of archaic vampire lore, the splendours of the Ottoman Empire and the beauty of the Romanian countryside’ – Times Literary Supplement

Reviews

Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK
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.
OBSERVER
A vastly ingenious plot . . . Kostova is a whiz at storytelling and narrative pace
ROZ KAVENEY
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. This is a quietly good book . . . with some uncomfortable twists in its tail; her heroine-narrators are, and perhaps remain, in the most serious of jeopardies.