Dracula myth (?) continued

If you are into vampires, history, or just a well-written adventure, check out The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. This recently published novel is a twenty-first century update of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Following Stoker's original multiple narrative form, contained mostly in written notes, letters, articles, et cetera, Kostova overcomes the malaise of the modern novel's addiction to the third person omniscient narration. Each narrator, and there are probably a dozen, has a distinct voice; she even uses British spelling in the written narration of Professor Bartolomeo Rossi, one of the Queen's subjects. It is this kind of attention to detail that makes reading The Historian such a pleasure.

Part of Kostova's success is due to her use of the historical research of my European history professor Raymond McNally and his partner, Radu Florescu. Their books In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires and Dracula: Prince of Many Faces posit that Vlad the Impaler, a Wallachian prince who defended the borders of Christendom against the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II with excessive cruelty, was in fact the prototype for Dracula, the blood thirsty undead. The Historian uses this scholarly foundation to tell multi-layered story of the search of Vlad's tomb. It is a human tale, populated by flesh and blood characters, blending more than five hundred years of history. This is a thinking man's Dracula.