|
內容簡介: |
Synopsis
''To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history''.''Late one
night, exploring her father''s library, a young woman finds an
ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all
addressed to ?My dear and unfortunate successor,? and they plunge
her into a world she never dreamed of''a labyrinth where the secrets
of her father''s past and her mother''s mysterious fate connect to an
inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.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.Parsing obscure signs and hidden texts, reading
codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions''and
evading the unknown adversaries who will go to any lengths to
conceal and protect Vlad''s ancient powers''one woman comes ever
closer to the secret of her own past and a confrontation with the
very definition of evil. Elizabeth Kostova''s debut novel is an
adventure of monumental proportions, a relentless tale that blends
fact and fantasy, history and the present, with an assurance that
is almost unbearably suspenseful''and utterly unforgettable.
When a teenage girl discovers a medieval book in her diplomat
father''s library, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his
involvement, 20 years earlier, in a search for his mentor, who
disappeared from his office only moments after confiding his
certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler--was still alive.
|
|