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 The Historian Books

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: The Historian

Amazon.com's Price: $9.99
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
EAN: 9780316067942
ISBN: 0316067946
Label: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 928
Publication Date: June 01, 2008
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Sales Rank: 9749
Studio: Little, Brown and Company



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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
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.

"Never was a ghost story so casually erudite, nor a historical travelogue such gripping entertainment." ---New York Magazine

"Impossible to resist. . . . Kostova blends fact and fantasy to remind us that the original Dracula legend is rooted in monstrous acts of unblinking evil." ---Miami Herald

"A richly told story about family and the dark side of human nature. . . . This cry of the heart will appeal to readers beyond those who are drawn by a fascaination with the legend of Dracula." ---Chicago Tribune

"Genuinely terrifying." ---Boston Globe

"Nearly impossible to put down once you crack the spine. . . . It won't take you long to get to the end." ---Houston Chronicle



Amazon.com Review:
If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

As well as numerous settings, both in and out of the East Bloc, Kostova has three basic story lines to keep straight--one from 1930, when Professor Bartolomew Rossi begins his dangerous research into Dracula, one from 1950, when Professor Rossi's student Paul takes up the scent, and the main narrative from 1972. The criss-crossing story lines mirror the political advances, retreats, triumphs, and losses that shaped Dracula's beleaguered homeland--sometimes with the Byzantines on top, sometimes the Ottomans, sometimes the rag-tag local tribes, or the Orthodox church, and sometimes a fresh conqueror like the Soviet Union.

Although the book is appropriately suspenseful and a delight to read--even the minor characters are distinctive and vividly seen--its most powerful moments are those that describe real horrors. Our narrator recalls that after reading descriptions of Vlad burning young boys or impaling "a large family," she tried to forget the words: "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." The reader, although given a satisfying ending, gets a strong enough dose of European history to temper the usual comforts of the closing words. --Regina Marler



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - What might have been
This book was hugely hyped even before it was even published, with Kostova getting a big fat $2 million advance from Little, Brown. (Note to self: Between Kostova and Meyer, LB apparently likes giving ridiculously big paychecks to debut authors and then spending even more to buy glowing advance reviews. V. successful. Must get on board.)

A friend loaned this to me weeks ago because we both like vampires and history - he claimed that after a slow start I would love it. My conclusion is ... Read More


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Perfect for Students of History or Literature
As a university student about to return to classes in a few weeks, I found an enthusiasm for this very scholarly novel, which I ultimately needed. The main problem with this book is that is stays true to the nature of historical research: searching through libraries with painstaking care, reading ancient texts, puzzling through inconsistencies. This is detective work at its finest, but even my study-starved mind became a little impatient at all the studying required to solve the mystery of Dracula. ... Read More


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Applause for what it could have been. Depression for what it actually was.
My sister gave me this book. I was quite skeptical. I remain quite skeptical, even though there are several aspects to the book that I actually really liked.

I liked it better than I thought I would after reading some pretty snarky reviews from friends. I liked it rather less than I thought I would based on the first 200 pages or so.

If you have been living under a rock, then here's the run down of the book: a young girl finds a mysterious book in her even-more mysterious ... Read More


Rating: 1 out of 5 stars - Disappointed
I was expecting an exciting story about vampire and vampire history. I could barely get through the first few chapters, it just rambled on and on, I got so bored, I didn't even want to skim through it. I ended up selling the book. I shouldn't really give it a one star because I didn't even finish reading it, so it might not be fair. BUT on the other hand I spent good money on this book and couldn't get through it shows me that it wasn't even worth the one star.


Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Dracula is Gonna Rip Up Your Card Catalog
This LONG tale about a search for Dracula is narrated by the teenaged daughter of a diplomat/historian living in Amsterdam in the 1970s. The story slowly unfolds through a series of letters and flashbacks - The mysterious appearance of a book with a woodcut of a dragon, her parents' search for the truth of the paper trail all over Europe and Eastern Europe in the 1950s, and the father's academic advisor's same search in the 1930s.

It is really (REALLY) hard to refrain from being incredibly ... Read More


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