The Historian by Kostova, Elizabeth (author) - 2006

Back Bay Books, 2006. Good. To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history....Late one night, explori ng 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 unfortuna te successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of-a laby rinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fa te connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history. The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ev er 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 me dieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracul a. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, a nd 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 fo llow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when h e 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 possibl e 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 Vl.