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Journalism of Courage
My dear and unfortunate successor: It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here8230; My regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read.8221;
It is with these words that a letter discovered by chance among her father8217;s papers launches the young woman protagonist of Elizabeth Kostova8217;s debut novel The Historian into an adventure that covers centuries and continents, new world and old, and travels through time and space. A young, motherless narrator, a father with a Past, a library, a letter, and a legacy of evil. Oh, and promises of vampires. The best kind: the bloodthirsty ones. What could be a better way to start a novel?
Like any literary adventure novel, The Historian is not an easy read. It is a handsome and heavy volume, weighing in at close to 650 pages. It is filled with letters, conversations, embedded narratives, italicised accounts. It begins with an old book that has a dragon 8212; a dragon! 8212; printed in the middle. It has scholarship of the best kind: the kind that approaches research as an intellectual adventure. It draws you into the pages and you read on guiltily through the night, shivering a little as the monsoon winds wail outside your windows. Especially when you read a declaration such as Dracula8217;s: 8220;History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so.8221; But it is a fascinating and enjoyable experience, and one is thinking about the questions it asks long after one has shut the book 8212; and waiting to get back to it again, when one has the time, the energy and the long weekend to spare for the task.
