Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

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The Historian: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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"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 known-and 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 herself-to 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 existed-and 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 reign-and 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 traditions-and evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to conceal and protect Vlad's ancient powers-one 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 suspenseful-and utterly unforgettable.
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.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Considering the recent rush of door-stopping historical novels, first-timer Kostova is getting a big launch-fortunately, a lot here lives up to the hype. In 1972, a 16-year-old American living in Amsterdam finds a mysterious book in her diplomat father's library. The book is ancient, blank except for a sinister woodcut of a dragon and the word "Drakulya," but it's the letters tucked inside, dated 1930 and addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," that really pique her curiosity. Her widowed father, Paul, reluctantly provides pieces of a chilling story; it seems this ominous little book has a way of forcing itself on its owners, with terrifying results. Paul's former adviser at Oxford, Professor Rossi, became obsessed with researching Dracula and was convinced that he remained alive. When Rossi disappeared, Paul continued his quest with the help of another scholar, Helen, who had her own reasons for seeking the truth. As Paul relates these stories to his daughter, she secretly begins her own research. Kostova builds suspense by revealing the threads of her story as the narrator discovers them: what she's told, what she reads in old letters and, of course, what she discovers directly when the legendary threat of Dracula looms. Along with all the fascinating historical information, there's also a mounting casualty count, and the big showdown amps up the drama by pulling at the heartstrings at the same time it revels in the gruesome. Exotic locales, tantalizing history, a family legacy and a love of the bloodthirsty: it's hard to imagine that readers won't be bitten, too.

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After this I remember nothing, but a nothing that lasted for a period I could not and still cannot measure. When I came slowly to myself again, I was amazed to find myself alive. I could not see or hear, in the first seconds. It was like emerging from a brutal surgery, and my awakening was immediately followed by a comprehension that I was in pain, that my whole body was terribly weak and ached profoundly, that there was a burning in my right leg and in my throat and head. The air was cold and dank, and whatever I lay on was cold, so that I felt chilled all over. This sensation was followed by light-a dim light but enough to convince me that I was not blind and that my eyes were open. This light, and the pain, more than anything else, confirmed to me that I was alive. I began to remember what I thought at first must have been the evening before-Paul coming to my office with his shocking discovery. Then I understood with a sudden plunging of my heart that I must be in the custody of evil; that was why my body had been brutalized and why I seemed surrounded by the very smell of evil.

I moved my limbs as cautiously as I could and managed through my great weakness to turn my head, and then to lift it. My sight was blocked by a dim wall not four inches away, but the feeble light I’d already perceived came in from above it. I sighed and heard my own sigh; this made me believe I could still hear, as well, and that I was simply in so silent a place that it had given me the illusion of deafness. I listened harder than ever, and, hearing nothing, I raised myself cautiously to a sitting position. The action sent miserable pain and weakness through all my limbs, and I felt my head throbbing. In the sitting position I regained more of my tactile sense and found I was lying on stone, and the low wall on each side of me helped me prop myself up. There was a terrible buzzing in my head, which seemed to fill the space all around me. It was a dim space, as I’ve said, silent and dwindling to darkness in the corners. I felt around with my hands. I was sitting up in an open sarcophagus.

This discovery sent a wave of nausea through me, but at the same moment I noted that I still wore the garments I’d had on in the office, although my shirt and jacket were torn in one sleeve and my tie was gone. The fact that I had my own clothes, however, gave me some reassurance; this was not death, not mere insanity, and I had not awakened in another era, unless I’d transported my clothes there with me. I felt my clothes and found my wallet in the front pocket of my pants. It was a shock to feel this familiar item under my hands. My watch, I found to my sorrow, was gone from my wrist, and my good pen from my inside jacket pocket.

Then I brought my hand up to my throat and face. My face seemed unchanged, apart from a very tender bruise on the forehead, but in the muscle of my throat I found a wicked puncture, sticky under my fingers. When I moved my head too far or swallowed hard, the wound made a sucking sound, appalling to me beyond all rationality. The punctured area was swollen, too, and throbbed with pain under my touch. I felt I might faint again from horror and hopelessness, and then I recalled that I had the strength to sit upright. Perhaps I had not lost as much blood as I’d at first feared, and perhaps that meant I had been bitten only once. I felt like myself, not like a demon; I felt no longing for blood, no wickedness of heart. Then a great misery swept over me. What did it matter whether I felt no bloodthirst yet? Wherever I was, it would surely be only a matter of time before I was fully corrupted. Unless, of course, I could escape.

I moved my head slowly, looking around, trying to make my eyes clear, and then I was able to discern the source of the light. It was a reddish glow far away in the darkness-but how far I could not tell-and between me and that glow loomed dark heavy shapes. I ran my hands down the outside of my house of stone. The sarcophagus seemed to be close to the ground, or to a stone floor, and I felt around until I’d determined that I could climb out into the dimness without falling any great distance. It was a long step out onto the floor, and my legs shook terribly, so that I stumbled to my knees as soon as I’d got out of the sarcophagus. Now I could see a little better, too. I made my way towards the source of soft reddish light with my hands in front of me, in the process bumping into what seemed to be another sarcophagus, which I found empty, and into a piece of wooden furniture. When I collided with the wood I heard something soft fall, but couldn’t see what it was.

This groping in the dimness was terrifying, and I expected at any second to be pounced on by the Thing that had brought me there. I wondered again if I might not actually be dead-if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life. But nothing pounced on me, the pain in my legs was convincing enough, and I was getting closer to the light, which danced and flickered at one end of the long chamber. Before this glow, I could see now, loomed a motionless dark bulk. When I was within a few yards of it I saw a fire on a hearth, burning low and red. It was framed by an arched stone fireplace, and it gave enough light to play off several massive old pieces of furniture-a great desk littered with papers, a carved chest, a tall angular chair or two. In one of the chairs, which had its back to me and its front to the fire, someone was sitting very still-I saw a dark shape just above the chair back. I wished now that I had felt my way in the opposite direction, away from the light and towards some possible escape, but I was terribly drawn by my glimpse of that dark shape and the regal chair below it, and by the soft red of the fire. On the one hand, it took all my willpower to walk towards it, and on the other I could not have turned away if I had tried.

I came slowly into the firelight on my bruised legs, and as I rounded the great chair a figure slowly rose and turned to me. Because his back was now to the fire, and because there was so little light around us, I could not see his face, although I thought in the first second that I caught a glimpse of bone-white cheek and glittering eye. He had long, curling, dark hair, which fell around his shoulders in a short mantle. There was something about his movement that was indescribably different from that of a living man, but whether it was swifter or slower I couldn’t have said. He was only a little taller than I, but gave a sense of height and bulk, and I could see the spread of his broad shoulders against the firelight. Then he reached for something, bending to the fire. I wondered if he was about to kill me and I stayed very quiet, hoping to die with some dignity, however it happened. But he was merely touching a long taper to the fire, and when it caught he lit other tapers in a candelabrum near his chair and turned again to face me.

Now I could see him better, although his face was still in shadow. He wore a peaked cap of gold and green with a heavy jewelled brooch pinned above his brow, and a massive-shouldered tunic of gold velvet with a green collar laced high under his large chin. The jewel on his brow and the gold threads in his collar glittered in the firelight. A cape of white fur was drawn around his shoulders and pinned with the silver symbol of a dragon. His clothing was extraordinary; I felt almost as frightened of it as I did of his strange undead presence. It was real clothing, living, fresh clothing, not the faded pieces of a museum exhibition. He wore it with extraordinary richness and grace, too, standing silently before me, so that the cape fell down around him like the swirl of snow. The candlelight revealed a blunt-fingered, scarred hand on a dagger hilt, and farther down a powerful leg in green hose and a booted foot. He shifted a little, turning in the light, but still silent. I could see his face better now, and the cruel strength of it made me shrink back-the great dark eyes under knitted brows, the long straight nose, the broad bonelike cheeks. His mouth, I saw now, was closed in a hard smile, ruby and curving under his wiry, dark mustache. At one corner of his lips I saw a stain of drying blood-oh, God, how that made me recoil. The sight of it was terrible enough, but the immediate realization that it was probably mine, my own blood, made my head swim.

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