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The Historian | 
 enlarge | Author: Elizabeth Kostova
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: £6.51
Buy Used: £4.95
You Save: £1.56 (24%)
Used (11) from £4.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  279 reviews
Sales Rank: 359465
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 928
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0316067946
EAN: 9780316067942
ASIN: 0316067946
Publication Date: June 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: SHIPS FROM THE UNITED STATES VIA AIR MAIL. SHOULD ARRIVE WITHIN 21 BUSINESS DAYS. Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers.
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Amazon.co.uk Review
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. From Stoker, she also takes a sense that the supernatural seems more real when embedded in documentary evidence. Three generations search for Dracula's resting place, and their stories are nested within each other, so that we know that at least two quests ended badly. Kostova rations her thrills very carefully so that we jump out of our chair at quite slight surprises, especially when we have come to expect buckets of blood and loud bangs. She also has a profound and well-communicated sense of place and period, so that the book is equally at home in 1930s Rumania, Cold War Budapest and 1970s Oxford. Kostova is particularly good on the sights and sounds of remote country places and the taste of real peasant food--this sensuous realism does not always go with her other skill, the creation of imagined documents and folksongs that feel as real and true as what might be actual. 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. ---Roz Kaveney
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| Customer Reviews: Read 274 more reviews...
 fantastic book October 21, 2008
I found this book to be intriguing and I pretty much read it as quickly as I could.
I liked the way it was told with a mixture of letter writing and present day. I also thought the concept was good.
While some places were a bit 'iffy' overall I think the book works marvellously. You have to pay attention, but you get the satisfaction of finding out new information and a good yarn into the bargain.
Atmospheric and respectful October 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is hard to believe this is a first novel, so successfully has Elizabeth Kostova captured the atmosphere of the original novel. It is written in a twin narrative by father and daughter, always a voyage of discovery backwards through time via research, documents and letters, left by those who went before...
It is a beautifully conveived idea. It is written with a great eye for detail and a wonderful ear for the academic voice and retrained mores of the time. Despite the length of this book (at over 700 pages of close type paperback) Kostova's style is actually highly economical. What she delivers is predominantly a historical mystery mixed with travelogue and laced with an undercurrent of elusive gothic horror. Occasionally the horror breaks through but Kostova never surrenders to it totally, much to her credit, as this would shatter the style of her writing and the credibility of the characters. She produces more shudders from eerily unsettling us than she could deliver via gratuitious shocks.
Kostova populates her novels with evenly introduced characters. You won't need your family tree wall planner to keep up with who is who. It's not Jane Austen - even if the tone owes something to her discipline. The slow unwinding allows them to develop, yet I found myself greedy for more developments and tearing through this book very rapidly at around 80 pages a day. It really does grip you, and given how detailed it is and and how carefully it is written, that's a terrific compliment. Of course, she inherits a wonderful legacy from Bram Stoker's spell-binding character, and the Dracula novel and films is openly referred to which makes it even more intruiging.
This is an archivists' drama - the librarian meets the undead. It casts a shadow over your nightgown (um...) and if you're thinking to yourself, 'Dracula - horror - blood - gore - etc' you'll be very disappointed. The people who will get most out of this are probably the ones who know least about the films and it definitely repays the literary reader. (Mind you, being a pedant I did spot three split infinitives...).
It is nice to gorge so thoroughly on a book that fully justifies the hype on the dust jacket and inside cover. If I have one minor criticism it is the slightly tapering end and I think Kostova could have made more of the ending somehow - I suppose I am secretly on the side of anybody who keeps a good book collection even if he is a vampire. A very nearly superb work. Four and a half stars.
 Hard Going! September 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was very hard going at times but I persevered and was glad I did as the meeting between Professor Rossi and Dracula described in the last few pages of the book was hair-raising stuff!
Tough going but very enjoyable in places.
Historical! September 14, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As the description says, this story is about Dracula. Although there is a strong atmosphere throughout the story I wasn't frightened out of my wits.
Instead there was lost of mystery, history and you get to see Dracula from a historical perspective. Where did all these stories of Dracula come from?
I loved this book and although it felt a little long in places I thoroughly enjoyed all of the historical references to Dracula and the eastern European countries surrounding the Dracula tales.
Because of all the historical content I was half expecting there to be some kind of twist where Dracula was just a figment of the characters imagination, but the story stays true to Dracula being a real and existing person.
I love the author's style of writing and how she allowed each character to tell their own story.
Wonderful!
 Boorrring September 7, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
What a waste of my valuable reading time, I would have had more horror reading Enid Blyton "Noddy lost in the Woods", also If I had wanted a potted version of Byzantine History I could have saved time reading Wilkepedia and as for travel details my local travel agent brochures could have told me as much if not more, I gave up after 600 of the 700 pages as nothing happens or seems to be about to happen, if it all happens in the last 100 pages then thats my loss but then the book should have only been 300 pages long. Thank heaven I didn't buy it, as it was a freebie from a friend who "couldnt get into it". I feel that this author has an incredible cheek to have her name listed on the same title page as Bram Stoker's "Dracula" she is not or ever will be in the same league as the MASTER and should be condemned to live on a diet of flies until he calls her to account.
Dont waste your money
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