The Historian

The novel unfolds through layers of storytelling. The narrator, looking back as an adult, recounts how her father, Paul, gradually told her about his years as a graduate student in the 1950s. Paul had found the same kind of strange dragon book in his library carrel and taken it to his adviser, Professor Bartholomew Rossi, who confessed that he had received one too and had researched Dracula's tomb, with frightening results. Soon afterward Rossi disappeared from his office, leaving only signs of a struggle.

Paul's search for Rossi took him, together with a sharp young scholar named Helen, to Istanbul, Budapest and Bulgaria, through archives, libraries and remote villages, following clues that suggested Vlad might still be alive. Their story is told in letters and recollections, while in 1972 the narrator's own father vanishes, and she follows his trail across Europe with a student friend. Kostova spent about a decade writing the book, and it is filled with real history, architecture and food of the places visited. The horror is quiet and gradual rather than gory.

Long, slow-paced and atmospheric. About 720 pages in the Back Bay paperback.