When Rossi uncovers the mythic lore surrounding Dracula and his relation to Vlad, he begins to study the book intensely. This leads Rossi to study Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, at great length. Rossi is stunned, explaining that he also found a similar book while he was a grad student in the 1930s. Paul gives the book to his teacher, Professor Bartholomew Rossi. She asks her father Paul about the origins of the tome, which he explains is a handmade book he found in his desk as a graduate student in the 1950s. The unnamed female narrator unearths an old leather-bound book with the image of a dragon connected with Dracula on the cover. Written in the epistolary form of diary entries, newsletters, public documents, etc., Part One of the story begins in 1972 Amsterdam. The Historian won several honors, including the 2003 Hopwood Award for Novel-in-progress, 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year, and 2006 Book Sense Award for Best Adult Fiction. The novel has been described as combining many genres, including Gothic novel, adventure epic, detective fiction, travelogue, historical thriller, and epistolary. The Historian is the first debut novel to become number one on the New York Times bestsellers list in its first week on the shelf. She spent 10 years writing the book, which sold just a few months after completion to Little, Brown and Company for two million U.S. The novel is inspired by the stories Kostova’s father would tell her about Dracula as a child. Divided into three parts, the story fuses the history and folklore of Vlad the Impaler and his fictional counterpart, Count Dracula. The Historian is the 2005 genre-bending debut novel written by American author Elizabeth Kostova.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova