Elizabeth Kostova Reading
Elizabeth Kostova reads from her novel entitled The Historian. During a question and answer session, Kostova details how the topic for her novel came from the stories about Dracula that her father had told her as a child while traveling through Europe. She addresses the decision to leave the narrator in the story unnamed, claiming that the narrator is unnamed even in her own mind.
Kostova goes on to point out that she considers The Historian her “love letter to libraries”, recalling the vast amounts of time she spent in libraries as a child. She also details the research that she performed in preparation for the novel, employing translations of mostly primary sources from the Middle Ages. Kostova shares that the majority of her sources were written by Byzantine, Ottoman, and Romanian historians of the time.
Kostova gives a brief explanation of the elusive mystery regarding Vlad the Impaler’s grave, outlining the various people throughout history that have claimed to identify his remains. She points out that she is not interested in horror as a literary genre, but instead the “horror of history”, especially with regard to geopolitical issues.
Kostova ends by explaining the process of translating her novel into audio format, and the extensive editing that inevitably had to take place. She shares the anecdote that, had the audio-book been unabridged, it would have spanned 26 hours and cost $80.00.
In: "Live from Prairie Lights" Audio Archive | Fiction
Authors: Elizabeth Kostova
Date Recorded: July 12, 2005
Works Read: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
Program: Live From Prairie Lights
Format: reading
Contributors: Introduction by host Julie Englander.
Topics: Vlad the Impaler/ Dracula, Middle Ages, libraries, audio-books