The Historian

The Historian (2005), Elizabeth Kostova’s best-selling novel, blends fact and fiction to reinvent the myth of the iconic vampire Dracula, or Vlad Ţepeş. In this retelling, the unnamed narrator accompanies her ambassador father, Paul, across Europe in the early 1970s as he tells her the story of his near encounter with the vampire. He tells her the Prince of Wallachia lives, 500 years after his death. Paul’s mentor, Dr. Rossi, was conducting research on Dracula when he disappeared in 1954; Paul must find Rossi before he, too, is corrupted. Paul meets Helen, a scholar of Romanian heritage who is also hunting Dracula, and Dr. Turgut Bora, a Turkish member of the Crescent Guard, tasked with protecting his people from the plague of vampirism. The Historian explores the tension between history and legend, the conflicting legacies of inheritance, and the fraught interactions between “East and West,” or Eastern Europe and the United States.

This guide refers to the 2006 Back Bay paperback edition.

Content Warning: The novel contains racial slurs, as well as depictions of violence, suicide, and incarceration.

Plot Summary

The narrator warns in a note to the reader that probing too deeply into history can be a dangerous undertaking. The narrator appears anxious about preserving this particular archive, but she is determined to tell her story. She makes an impassioned appeal to her reader for their understanding.

In Part 1, the narrator finds a bundle of letters among her father’s papers. When she asks him about them, he reluctantly tells her the story of his history mentor, Dr. Rossi. Rossi disappeared while researching the whereabouts of Dracula, who, Rossi is convinced, is alive. Paul initially approaches Rossi about this subject when he discovers a mysterious, antiquated book among his papers in the library: It is blank, except for a woodcut of a dragon at its center. Rossi has a similar copy of the book, and he believes it is connected to Dracula. Shortly after their discussion, Rossi goes missing.

During his search for Rossi and subsequent research into Dracula, Paul meets Helen Rossi, the illegitimate daughter of his mentor. Raised in Hungary by a Romanian mother, Helen wants to find Rossi—initially to rebuff him, later to reunite with him. It becomes clear that, if they want to save Rossi, they will have to travel. Paul’s research suggests that there might be more clues in Istanbul, where Vlad Dracula’s sworn enemy, Sultan Mehmed II, kept his archives.

As the narrator’s father tells the story, he grows tired and agitated. The two travel to Oxford, supposedly on ambassadorial business, but the narrator catches her father studying books about vampires. She wakes one night to find him gone. A letter explains that he left to search for her mother—who, the narrator realizes, is Helen Rossi.

In Part 2, Paul and Helen meet Dr. Turgut Bora, who assists them in their research. They believe that finding Dracula’s tomb will lead them to Rossi. Their search grows even more urgent when Helen is bitten by one of Dracula’s acolytes. If she is attacked twice more, she will become like Dracula. However, without more information, their search is futile. Helen arranges a visit to Hungary—a difficult task at the height of the Cold War—to conduct research in Budapest and to visit her mother. Her mother’s affair with Rossi might reveal something further.

In Hungary, her mother gives them an old packet of letters from Rossi. Addressed to his friend back in Oxford, Rossi reveals that he traveled to Romania in his search for Dracula and met a local village woman. Helen’s mother, he discovers, is an actual descendent of Dracula, as is Helen. When Paul and Helen return to Istanbul, Turgut reveals a letter from a 15th-century monk traveling from Constantinople to Bulgaria, carrying a terrifying treasure. Paul and Helen must go to Bulgaria.

The narrator reads this course of events in her father’s letters, which she has taken from his study, along with a silver dagger. She has eluded her housekeeper—though not her chaperone, the Oxford student Stephen Barley—to follow her father. She and Barley travel to France: She believes her father has returned to the monastery of Saint-Matthieu.

In Part 3, Paul and Helen find their search in Bulgaria hampered by a state-sponsored guide, Ranov. Still, they meet with the famed local historian Anton Stoichev: he also has a copy of the mysterious book with the dragon woodcut. He also possesses letters from the same 15th-century monk describing the journey between Constantinople and Bulgaria. Stoichev mentions a monastery named Sveti Georgi, a suspected burial place of Vlad Dracula. But no such monastery exists, and the group travels to Rila for further research. They visit a nearby village to talk to locals about folklore and rumors of the dragon who once protected them.

They discover the old church in the village is Sveti Georgi. Underneath the reliquary of the local saint, they find an older stone tomb. Rossi is inside, not Dracula, though Rossi has been attacked multiple times. He tells them that Dracula fled. When dusk falls, Paul and Helen must drive a stake through Rossi’s heart. They search the now-empty library, finding Rossi’s final letters inside an ancient book. These letters describe his encounter with Dracula, who has amassed a collection of books relating to war, torture, or himself. He seeks a scholar to catalog his collection. Since Rossi found Dracula, he was deemed worthy of this task, but Rossi refused, so Dracula ravaged his neck and placed him in his own empty tomb. Dracula remains at large.

Paul and Helen return to Boston, where they are married and, eventually, have a child—the narrator. Helen descends into a sadness after the narrator’s birth: She was bitten a second time while traveling in Bulgaria. Her awareness of descending from Vlad the Impaler along with her bites make her feel unclean. Paul suggests they go to France to lift her spirits. Indeed, when they travel to the monastery of Saint-Matthieu, Helen seems revived. However, after only a couple of days, it appears that Helen leaps to her death from the cliffs outside of the church.

The narrator knows—as does her father, at this point—that this is not true. She has found postcards from her mother, addressed to her, that postdate the supposed time of her death. The narrator thinks that Helen has tracked Dracula’s tomb to that location, and Paul will find Helen there.

As the narrator and Barley descend the steps of the empty church, they find her father, Paul, prying open the tomb. It is empty, but Dracula arrives. Dracula is distracted by a figure leaping from the shadows behind him, and a gunshot from Helen finishes him off. His remains crumble into dust. The family is reunited, and Barley learns that his mentor, Master James from Oxford, was also on the hunt for Dracula. He sacrifices his life so that Helen can shoot Dracula.

The narrator, looking back 36 years, notes that her mother would die less than a decade after their reunion. Still, she and her father ensured that her death did not end in vampiric rebirth. Paul takes the dagger to her gravesite, promising that she rests in peace.

In the Epilogue, the narrator reveals that, on a trip to Philadelphia, she indulges in minor research into Dracula. As she leaves the library, she notices that someone has placed a book—an old one, with a woodcut of a dragon at its center—among her things. In the final paragraphs, she imagines Dracula returning to Wallachia many centuries ago, preparing for his death, yet resolutely full of life.