Elizabeth Kostova · 2005 · overland

Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 debut, a Gothic quest braiding three generations of historians who hunt the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, across Cold War Europe. From a mysterious dragon-stamped book the trail runs through Oxford's libraries, the archives of Istanbul, the monasteries of Romania and Bulgaria, and a final reckoning in the Pyrenees. Part epistolary thriller, part travelogue, it fetishises documents, archives and the eerie places that house them.

1. 1
   Amsterdam

   In 1972 a teenage girl finds a strange book and a sheaf of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library, and the hunt for Dracula begins.

2. 2
   Harwich

   The North Sea crossing from the Low Countries lands at Harwich on the English coast.

3. 3
   Oxford

   The letters lead back to Oxford, where her father's mentor Professor Rossi first traced Vlad the Impaler, and then vanished.

4. 4
   Dover

   The road down to Dover and the Channel packet.

5. 5
   Calais

   Across to Calais and the long overland road east.

6. 6
   Istanbul

   To Istanbul, and the archive of Sultan Mehmed II, for the maps and documents that might reveal where the Impaler truly lies.

7. 7
   Budapest

   To Budapest and Helen's estranged mother, who holds the secret of a bloodline reaching back into Wallachia.

8. 8
   Snagov

   To the island monastery of Snagov in Romania, Vlad's reputed grave, and the ruined castle above the Arges.

9. 9
   Rila

   Into Cold War Bulgaria and its mountain monasteries, following an old monk's chronicle toward the hidden tomb of Sveti Georgi.

10. 10
    Saint-Matthieu

    And at last to a remote monastery in the French Pyrenees, where the centuries-old evil has carried his library, and waits.