Elizabeth Kostova

It took me about a hundred pages to get into ‘The Historian’, which seems fitting as it is a book that systematically and incrementally builds a mystery much as an academic work builds a thesis. The narrative includes letters, excerpts from documents, stories told by one character to another, and stories told within stories. I enjoyed this multi-layered style, which required a hundred or so pages to initially establish who the main characters are and what they’re doing. I also greatly appreciated that so much of the plot took place in and/or centred around libraries. Since my attitude to libraries is unmitigated adoration, the variety and frequency of library visits in the book was delightful.

As well as the settings and atmosphere, I liked the characters a lot. Most of them are researchers, academic or otherwise, strongly motivated by intellectual curiosity. This made a lovely change from narratives of treasure hunting for material gain. It also meant that, for a supernatural mystery thriller, there was little violence. Tension and menace were instead deployed sparingly and well. This intellectual curiosity also links to two other elements I liked. One is the way that characters help one another, rather than being defensive of their own work. This really emphasised that research and intellectual enquiry are collaborative processes, and that talking through ideas improves them. It was lovely to have co-operation emphasised over competitiveness. The second element was continuity, the manner in which research builds upon what has gone before, the way that generation succeeds generation, and each person is merely a link in an intellectual chain. The multi-layered narrative contributed to this powerful sense of time, of short human lives within history's sweep. And, of course, it made for a striking contrast with the supernatural element, namely Dracula.

Since the blurb is quite chary of mentioning him, I didn’t initially realise that this is a novel about academic research into Dracula. It manages very well not to fall into mere melodrama (not that I don’t enjoy reading ‘mere melodrama’). Although the presence of Dracula hangs over the whole book, as a character he is used sparingly and carefully. Overall, I really enjoyed this dense, fascinating novel that explores the edges of Europe and conjures up the 15th century as effectively as the 1960s. It will resonate in particular with humanities and social science students, I think. Thank you Rae for recommending it to me!

To conclude, although I admire Rossi for his moral stand, in his place I would have jumped at the chance to become Dracula's librarian. MY DREAM JOB.… (plus d'informations)