It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. Kostova’s style and the nature of the tale: The first snippet from these letters perfectly illustrates both Ms. In the dragon’s claws hung a banner on which ran a single word in Gothic lettering: “Drakulya.” Inside the volume the young woman also finds a number of yellowed, aging letters. The book the young woman discovers is obviously centuries old and features on two facing pages a “great woodcut of a dragon with spread wings and a long looped tail, a beast unfurled and raging, claws outstretched. The second voice is that of the young woman’s father relating even earlier events from his days as a young historian and scholar, with the third belonging to his distinguished and much revered mentor and advisor. Largely an epistolary novel told from several points of view, the first – and, in many ways, the primary – narrator of the story is a woman in her fifties telling of the pivotal events of 36 years earlier that followed her discovery of a mysterious book in her father’s library. And even though The Historian isn’t perfect, if you’re anything like me, this isn’t a book you’re “supposed” to love, this is a book you will love. What I mean by that – and I’m just being honest here – is that even though the author’s prose is sophisticated, her story complex, and the demands she places on the reader not inconsiderable, this 642-page debut novel is as riveting and unputdownable a tale as even the most demanding reader could possibly expect.

Equal parts paranormal, historical fiction, and kick-butt thriller, The Historian is a rare thing – a “literary” novel that doesn’t read like one.

The historian elizabeth kostova review