
The Historian
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Narrated by:
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Justine Eyre
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Paul Michael
About this listen
The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known, and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself, to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive.
What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed, and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign, and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.
©2005 Elizabeth Kostova. All Rights Reserved. (P)2005 Books on TapeListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
- 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year, Adult Fiction
"A bloodthirsty delight....Both literary and scary, this one is guaranteed to keep one reading into the wee hours." (Booklist)
"Along with all the fascinating historical information, there's also a mounting casualty count, and the big showdown amps up the drama by pulling at the heartstrings at the same time it revels in the gruesome. Exotic locales, tantalizing history, a family legacy and a love of the bloodthirsty: it's hard to imagine that readers won't be bitten, too." (Publishers Weekly)
"The Historian is artfully constructed and atmospheric." (Washington Post Book World)
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Story
Czechoslovakia, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a newly trained psychiatrist who studied under Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle surrounded by forests, on a site that is well known for concealing dark secrets going back many centuries. The asylum houses six inmates - the country's most treacherous killers - known to the terrified public as the Devil's Six. Viktor intends to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon he calls The Devil Aspect.
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ACTUALLY KEPT MY INTEREST THROUGHOUT!
- By Summer G on 12-15-20
By: Craig Russell
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The Thirteenth Tale
- A Novel
- By: Diane Setterfield
- Narrated by: Bianca Amato, Jill Tanner
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life: Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth remains an ever-present pain.
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Simply Amazing Story--2 missing chapters
- By JE on 01-28-10
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The Bookman's Tale
- A Novel of Obsession
- By: Charlie Lovett
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books, The Bookman's Tale is a former bookseller's sparkling novel and a delightful exploration of one of literature's most tantalizing mysteries with echoes of Shadow of the Wind and A.S. Byatt's Possession.
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Mixed bag.
- By William on 08-13-13
By: Charlie Lovett
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Powers of Darkness
- The Lost Version of Dracula
- By: Bram Stoker, Valdimar Asmundsson, Hans Corneel de Roos, and others
- Narrated by: Adam Verner, Robertson Dean, Ralph Lister, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery. In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Asmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker's world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, 'Powers of Darkness'), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker's preface to the book.
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An unfinished work
- By Kindle Customer on 09-05-18
By: Bram Stoker, and others
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The Demonologist
- A Novel
- By: Andrew Pyper
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor David Ullman's expertise in the literature of the demonic - notably Milton's Paradise Lost - has won him wide acclaim. But David is not a believer. One afternoon he receives a visitor at his campus office, a strikingly thin woman who offers him an invitation: travel to Venice, Italy, witness a "phenomenon", and offer his professional opinion, in return for an extravagant sum of money. Needing a fresh start, David accepts and heads to Italy with his beloved 12-year-old daughter, Tess. What happens in Venice will send David on an unimaginable journey from skeptic to true believer....
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I Beg to Differ (and before you spend your credit)
- By Mel on 03-05-13
By: Andrew Pyper
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The Witch's Heart
- By: Genevieve Gornichec
- Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology. Angrboda’s story begins where most witches' tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love.
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A Masterful Exploration of Norse Myth
- By Catherine A Rector on 02-19-21
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The Dante Club
- By: Matthew Pearl
- Narrated by: John Siedman
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club, poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields, are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World.
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highbrow suspense
- By Pattio on 02-28-07
By: Matthew Pearl
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House of Hunger
- By: Alexis Henderson
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery.
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Definetely was a letdown.
- By LPST on 02-07-23
By: Alexis Henderson
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Fledgling
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
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Why is everyone okay with the child porn imagery?
- By JG on 07-18-20
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My Darling Dreadful Thing
- A Novel
- By: Johanna van Veen
- Narrated by: Jess Nesling
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.
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Holds Out Until the Last Minute
- By Andy on 12-19-24
By: Johanna van Veen
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Lute
- By: Jennifer Thorne
- Narrated by: Victoria Blunt
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On the idyllic island of Lute, every seventh summer, seven people die. No more, no less. Lute and its inhabitants are blessed, year after year, with good weather, good health, and good fortune. So it’s only fair that every seven years, on the day of the tithe, the island’s gift is honored. Nina Treadway is new to The Day. A Florida girl by birth, she became a Lady through her marriage to Lord Treadway, whose family has long protected the island. Nina’s heard about The Day, of course. It's all superstitious nonsense. Then The Day begins. And it's a day of nightmares.
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Slow to unwind- but what a finish!
- By linda on 10-08-22
By: Jennifer Thorne
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The Deep
- By: Alma Katsu
- Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Someone, or something, is haunting the ship. Between mysterious disappearances and sudden deaths, the guests of the Titanic have found themselves suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone from the moment they set sail. Several of them, including maid Annie Hebley, guest Mark Fletcher, and millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, are convinced there's something sinister - almost otherwordly - afoot. But before they can locate the source of the danger, as the world knows, disaster strikes.
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More sad slice-of-life than horror
- By Anonymous User on 04-28-20
By: Alma Katsu
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The Club Dumas
- By: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
- Narrated by: David Warner
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Lucas Corso, middle-aged, tired, and cynical, is a book detective, a mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found hanged, leaving behind part of the of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. Soon the unsuspecting Corso is drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do.
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Needs to be fixed.
- By James Morehouse on 10-23-17
I like the concept of a book written in letters, but it goes to far with letters inside of letters inside of letters, and the only present character appears too rarely.
The narration is fabulous - a male and a female voice with excellent ability to change accents - without this variation, I don't think I could have made it through the book, and I certainly couldn't have read it.
Excellent narration, but...
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Amazing stoyteller
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What made the experience of listening to The Historian the most enjoyable?
It makes you feel like you are reading a historical novel. You find yourself in a Transylvania reverie wondering if vampires might be real. Didn't the historian just prove it? The narrators did an excellent job of gliding from one character to another without any annoying disturbances in the flow of the story. Because the story was written about an earlier time, before cell phones and computers, it was much easier for us to be seduced into picturing it a perfect era for Dracula, even if it was in the 20th century. Some of the other reviewers made me laugh because they felt like it had "unbelievable plot twists" andcoincidences. This is a story about vampires after all. If you want a an enjoyable fictional read, without all the blood, gore and sex of other vampire novels, this is the book for you. And yes, unbelievable things just might happen and for no particular reason other than to entertain us.
What other book might you compare The Historian to and why?
The Historian definitely has the flavor of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley with the old world architecture and the Romanian woods and mountains.What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Hearing the different dialects, especially when they are done well, really makes a story come to life.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I found the meeting with Helens mother very moving. It was a little bit of light in a book about darkness.Any additional comments?
If you liked the original Dracula, you will love this book.Vampires for adults (Is that possible?)
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For me? It was awesome. It's a vampire novel from the prospective of a historian. As a history buff who loves nothing more than the dustiest floor of the library, it was a really different and compelling take on the vampire novel.
For a historian? Fun
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The format did get a little confusing because the story was told in three parts in three different time periods, so you had to pay close attention to what time period they were talking about.
Great book!
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I normally don't read books about Dracula or this type of book. But this search for Dracula isn't the ordinary story of vampires. The author gives alot of historical information and a very interesting story line. I was always curious about what was going to happen, and was surprised at the ending. I enjoyed it alot, and recommend you read it even if you aren't interested in Dracula.
Very Enjoyable
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good story but very long!
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One I will mention is that at the beginning of the novel, the young heroine had travelled to a city. She gave the city a ficticious name to protect it from thrill seeking tourists. It was an obvious reference to the effect that The Divinci Code had on people who thronged to see the landmarks in the book. I thought both - a ficticious name for the city and the nod to The Divinci Code - totally irrelevant. It seemed to stick out as a sore thumb when other cities and landmarks were not similarily treated.
What I loved about the book was the attention to detail in the historical research. It had me searching maps and articles online for more information. The other thing I loved was the narration of Paul Michaels. I see that Audibles has another version narrated by Joanne Whalley, Dennis Bourtsikaris, and others. I would highly recommend that you get the version with Paul Michaels. He is masterful at accents. Each character that he speaks for has their own unique sound.
It was a pleasure to read a book about Dracula that didn't follow the Romeo & Juliet theme of the Twilight series and the plethora of its ilk that is the fad of teenage girls everywhere. It returns Dracula and vampires back to the evil, cruel creatures of Bram Stoker's day.
Historical Fiction on the Trail of Dracula
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Would you listen to The Historian again? Why?
Yes, the story is so detailed, especially in historical references that one would have to in order to truly recall everything.What did you like best about this story?
There is a great deal of research behind this story, making it all the more real for the listener. I found myself googling places in western Europe that I would have never known about otherwise. Similar to the art I googled while reading Dan Brown, the story makes you want to know more about the environment. I feel smarter after reading this book!!What does Justine Eyre and Paul Michael bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Since this story is so detailed, the juxtaposition of male and female voices truly is helpful in keeping with the complex story line, especially when moving from the present to the past within the chapters.If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
The Vlad you've never knownAny additional comments?
Starts out a little dry, but well worth the time you put in. Stay with it!!Hang in there!! It's worth it!!
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Would you listen to The Historian again? Why?
No. The plot, story, and narration were good but it was a little too long. The book could have been summed up in a shorter period of time.What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
I was really disappointed in the ending. It left some loose ends and unanswered questions. It was just abrupt.Which scene was your favorite?
I enjoyed the scenes in Turkey and Bulgaria.Who was the most memorable character of The Historian and why?
I enjoyed the girl narrator. Though we do not know much about her, she has a thirst for the truth about the past.Any additional comments?
It seemed a little one-sided historical speaking. I wish both sides were discussed.The Historian
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