SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

Usually when I read a novel described as “controversial,” I find myself seeing both sides of the controversy and writing about both sides when I write a review. With this novel, however, I was so exhilarated at the author’s bold originality, his ability to juggle his characters’ vibrant and creative inner lives while also examining the depressing circumstances under which they lived, the sweeping historical scope which includes the entire twentieth century, and his total control of language with all its potential to amaze with its images and ideas, that this review will be, I hope, a celebration of one of the best and most innovative books I have read in a long time. Ulrich, the Bulgarian main character, is almost a hundred years old as the novel opens. Blind, impoverished (after all the failed economic experiments of the various governments in Bulgaria), and alone, he spends his days looking out a window from which he cannot see. His inner world, however, is lively and filled with events, real and imagined. What follows, is an extraordinary novel, however, controversial in its structure, which I found riveting. One of my favorites for the year.

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Author Elizabeth Kostova’s unusual debut novel combines her ten years of scholarly research on Vlad Tepes, the Impaler of Wallachia, sometimes known as Drakulya, with the stories that have become part of local folklore in Bulgaria and Rumania, and the legends created and perpetuated by Bram Stoker (in his novel Dracula). A sadistic prince from the mid-fifteenth century who killed up to 15,000 of his own people, often impaling them on stakes and leaving them to die horrible deaths, Vlad terrified his enemies from the Ottoman Empire, though it was Stoker who created the belief that he was a vampire. Historians and scholars will be fascinated by the detailed information revealed in this novel as the three main characters uncover key information about Vlad/Drakulya. Though the story is often exciting—and has a conclusion which packs a wallop–the novel involves serious, scholarly research, and the “novel’s” characters themselves are undeveloped.

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