Elizabeth Kostova THE HISTORIAN First Edition Signed
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Elizabeth Kostova THE HISTORIAN First Edition Signed
First edition, first print hardback of THE HISTORIAN, by Elizabeth Kostova and published by Little, Brown and Company, London, in 2005. Signed by Elizabeth Kostova on the title page.The book is in very good condition (Clean red cloth boards with grey lettering on the spine) with only minor wear to the dust jacket, which is not price clipped (light creasing to edges, gentle sticker removal wear to front cover, creasing line to bottom corner of inside front flap). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Elizabeth Kostova's engrossing debut novel is the culmination of ten years of research and a lifetime of imagining - since Kostova's girlhood, when her father entertained her with tales of Dracula, she has envisioned the story that would become The Historian.
With her academic spirit and extraordinary talent, she's spun an intricate tale of sprawling mystery and suspense. Kostova graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress. Her second novel, The Swan Thieves, was published in 2009.
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.
'This literary thriller is a page-turner with brains DAILY MAIL
The Historian amounts to something profound. . . and wondrously mathematical at times, a genre novel by Bach . . . We encounter obsession, possession, and the struggle against the brevity of life. It is an exploration of the eternal desire for intimacy. THE TIMES
The Historian is great fun. . . told with a compelling intensity which will keep the reader hooked until the last Undead tomb door swings shut SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
642 pages. Maps on endpapers.
ISBN: 0 316 73031 9
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Elizabeth Kostova THE HISTORIAN First Edition Signed