THE SUMPTUOUS INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. ''A smart retelling of the Dracula story'' New Yorker''Quite extraordinary....Kostova is a natural storyteller....She has refashioned the vampire myth into a compelling contemporary novel, a late-night page-turner'' - San Francisco ChronicleBreathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family''s past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe-in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world.''Filled with fascinating details of archaic vampire lore, the splendours of the Ottoman Empire and the beauty of the Romanian countryside'' - Times Literary Supplement