The Historian Elizabeth Kostova | ISBN : 0-316-05886-6

The Historian

Author: Elizabeth Kostova

Publisher: Little Brown & Company

Publication Date: 01 June, 2005

ISBN: 9780316058865

Pages: 1174

Subjects: General, Horror, Historical, Occult and supernatural

Available as: Trade Cloth, 978-0-316-05886-5 Trade Cloth, 978-0-316-01177-8 Trade Paper, 978-0-316-07063-8 E-Book - Gemstar REB 1100, 978-0-316-02675-8 E-Book - netLibrary, 978-0-7393-5335-6 E-Book - Sony Format, 978-0-7595-6747-4 E-Book - Mobipocket, 978-0-7595-1384-6 E-Book - Open Ebook; EPUB, 978-0-7595-1383-9 E-Book - Peanut Press; eReader (AKA Palm Reader), 978-0-7595-1381-5 E-Book - GlassBook; Adobe Ebook Reader, 978-0-7595-1382-2 E-Book - Microsoft Reader: Pocket PC & Desktp/Laptop; Microsoft Reader Level 5, 978-0-7595-1385-3

Description:

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history...... Late one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to My dear and unfortunate successor, and they plunge 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 inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history. The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever knownand to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herselfto follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existedand that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reignand about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages. Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditionsand evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powersone woman comes ever closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel is an adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that is almost unbearably suspensefuland utterly unforgettable.

PW Publishers Weekly

Review Source: PW Annex Reviews

Review Date: 2009-12-21

It's been four years since Kostova's door-stopping vampire novel first shot up the bestseller lists, but this marvelous audio adaptation is worth the wait. Narrated by an ensemble of talented actors, this audio book is enhanced by impressive musical scoring during key transitions (from past to present, or between narrators) and at pivotal junctures in the story. The music adds to the eeriness of the novel's progression, while the brisk abridgement keeps the pace moving much more compellingly than the print version: where the novel reproduced a 15 page academic journal article, this adaptation trims it to its bones by allowing primary sources to speak directly across centuries of history. Rich with evocative settings and a sparkling cast, this adaptation may be an improvement upon the original. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Sept.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.