2 of 4

Write now Article Tools

Page 2 of 3

parts of Europe and, later, from Amsterdam to Southern France with an undergraduate from Oxford, Stephen Barley; her father's travels during the 1950s, when as a graduate student, he traveled to Istanbul and then parts of Eastern Europe in search of his mentor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi and Professor Rossi's travels in Eastern Europe during 1930. Much of the story is told through letters, excerpts from books and academic literature along with the narrator's recollections of stories told to her by her father.

Where the book works well is its attention to detail. Based on historical facts as we know them, Vlad Tepes lived from 1431 until 1476 and reigned in Wallachia on three occasions i.e. 1448, 1456 1462 and 1476. He was a staunch defender of Christendom, fighting the Turks who were intent on expanding the Ottoman Empire. His fierce reputation came from the way he dealt with his enemies of which the Turks were one although the local nobility or boyars also came in for harsh punishment through impalement amongst other dubious methods of execution resulting in the label, Vlad the Impaler. The author successfully takes the historical data available and builds a sinister tale of undead assistants and suspicious officials spread across the Cold War Europe of the twentieth Century, relating the actions of the characters in the book to the events of previous centuries.

The method employed in telling the story works for the most part although the complexity of the plot strands along with the jump in chronology at times brought demands on my attention span as I concentrated on the latest twist and turn in the tale. It would have been easy to fall into the trap of anachronism with the way Kostova has written the book but I didn't spot any even if I suspect that the original drafts would have had to have been re-written a number of times to remain consistent. The characterization works on the whole with the writer using pen-pictures of her protagonists and it was easy to feel empathy for the lead figures, especially with the sub-plot around Paul's companion Helen and the circumstances surrounding her upbringing. The significance of the book's title does become clear in the closing chapters and is a clever touch, typical in this particular novel.

I particularly liked the mental images painted along the way of rural France, cosmopolitan Istanbul (Constantinople) and the rustic charm of Balkan countries like Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. As the plot thickens and the reader

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Book reviews: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova?
We want to hear your view. Write now!