CANR
WORK TITLE: The Shadow Land
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 12/26/1964
WEBSITE: http://www.elizabethkostova.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: LRC 2010
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/16/522778257/a-strange-odyssey-through-bulgaria-in-shadow-land * https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/04/11/the-shadow-land-a-novel-elizabeth-kostova-book-review/100027620/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born December 26, 1964, in New London, CT; married; husband’s name Georgi (a computer scientist and scholar).
EDUCATION:Yale University, B.A.; University of Michigan, M.F.A., 2004.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, and educator. Has worked recording folk music in Bulgaria, as a business writing teacher, and as a freelance magazine writer. Taught English as a second language, composition, and creative writing at University of North Carolina at Wilmington, University of Michigan, Drexel University, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, and Pennsylvania State University; also taught in Bulgaria and at Bear River Writers’ Conference, MI. Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, founder, 2007; member, University Council, American University of Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad; vice-president, Pen & Plate Club, NC.
AWARDS:Hopwood Award for novel-in-progress, University of Michigan, 2003, Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year, 2005, and Book Sense Award for Best Adult Fiction, 2005, all for The Historian.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and anthologies, including Another Chicago Magazine, Best American Poetry, Michigan Quarterly, Mississippi Review, and Poets & Writers.
SIDELIGHTS
The idea at the center of Elizabeth Kostova’s lengthy debut novel, The Historian, is that the legendary, dreaded Count Dracula still walks among mortals. The Dracula of Kostova’s world, however, does not resemble the urbane but deadly charmer characterized by Bela Lugosi in film, nor does he share the wanton violence and feral characteristics of more recent vampires. Instead, Kostova’s Dracula is himself a historian: He is an archivist, a dusty academic, a scholar more at home with crumbling books and historical documents than waiflike victims and flapping bats. The Historian “is a tale of such fiendish complication that while writing it, Kostova kept a chart on her wall tracing the narratives,” noted Malcolm Jones in Newsweek. “But it is a testament to her skill that, as you’re reading, the book never feels complicated,” Jones added. This Dracula has nothing to do with the version put forth by Stoker; Kostova’s character is based on Vlad Ţepeş, also known as Vlad the Impaler, the sadistic prince of Wallachia who refined slow torture to its pinnacle using the blunt point of a stake in the ground.
The novel and its labyrinthine plot, occult conspiracies, and international academic mysteries have garnered comparisons to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, but Kostova started the novel eight years before Brown’s book was published. The idea for The Historian occurred to Kostova more than a decade ago, while she was hiking through the Appalachian mountains with her husband. What if a father was telling stories about Dracula to his daughter, she thought, and what if Dracula himself was there to listen in on them?
The story begins when the novel’s unnamed narrator, who is sixteen years old in 1972, finds an unusual book and a mysterious packet of letters in her father Paul’s library in Amsterdam. The book is blank, except for an ominous center spread depicting a dragon holding a banner emblazoned with the word “Drakulya.” The letters, alarming in themselves, are dated 1930 and addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor.” Initially hesitant to provide any information, Paul eventually relates a complicated tale of encounters with ancient evil. The book, Paul tells his daughter, mysteriously appeared on his desk when he was a graduate student and inspired him to undertake some research on the historical Dracula—a word that, in Romanian, means “dragon.” When Paul mentions the book to his professor, Bartholomew Rossi, he learns that Rossi also received a copy of the unusual tome. Rossi’s research, however, convinced him that the historical Dracula was still alive. A few days later, Rossi disappeared from his blood-spattered office, and despite the unreality of the situation, Paul was convinced that his mentor was in the hands of Dracula and in deadly danger. Searching for the man, Paul encountered Helen Rossi, who said she was the professor’s unknown daughter, but who bore the first name of the narrator’s mother. Helen joined Paul on his unsuccessful search. A few days after telling his daughter this story, Paul also disappears, allegedly called away on business, but leaving a note imploring his daughter to start carrying garlic in her pockets and wearing a crucifix.
Kostova weaves together a sophisticated interconnected storyline that spans the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s, as the narrator searches for her father, Paul searches for Rossi, and Rossi makes his own investigation into relationships between the mysterious book, its recipients, and the uncanny truth about Ţepeş. Some reviewers have been critical of the novel’s slow pace. “The characters wander from dusty old archive to archive, their pockets stuffed full of garlic, perusing crumbling volumes, analyzing creepy Balkan folk songs, and debriefing sage Eastern European elders who hoard ancestral secrets,” commented Jennifer Reese in Entertainment Weekly. “Eventually, even the most patient reader may begin to tire of all this talking and touring.”
Numerous other critics, however, found considerably more to like about Kostova’s novel. “The writing is excellent, and the pace is brisk, although it sags a bit in the middle,” noted Patricia Altner in Library Journal. “Blending history and myth, Kostova has fashioned a version so fresh that when a stake is finally driven through a heart, it inspires the tragic shock of something happening for the very first time,” Jones remarked. Salon.com reviewer Laura Miller commented on the book’s settings and atmosphere, stating that “Kostova has a genius for evoking places without making you wade through paragraphs of description.”
Kostova has “done something quite extraordinary,” concluded June Sawyers in a review for the San Francisco Chronicle. “She has refashioned the vampire myth into a compelling contemporary novel, a late-night page-turner that will be sure to make you lose some precious hours of sleep. It is a sprawling piece of work, the kind of novel that supposedly doesn’t get published anymore.”
In The Swan Thieves, Kostova “forsakes vampires for artists—artists beset by talent and torment, all destructive lifestyles and a whiff of linseed, who implode their way through more than 500 pages,” commented London Guardian reviewer Joanna Briscoe. After attempting to damage a painting of Leda and the Swan at the National Gallery of Art, noted contemporary painter Robert Oliver is arrested and committed to a private mental hospital near Washington, DC. Oliver’s psychiatrist is Andrew Marlow, himself an amateur painter. After uttering a few words—mostly to give Marlow permission to interview anyone that has known him—Oliver falls silent, refusing to talk to Marlow or anyone else in the facility.
As time passes, Oliver continues to draw, rendering illustrations of the same mysterious woman over and over. He refuses to identify her and will not tell Marlow if his drawings are of a real person or someone from his imagination. However, Marlow recognizes that the drawings and paintings of the nineteenth-century woman are likely to have significant meaning for his patient. Marlow also discovers that Oliver possesses a packet of very old letters, dated from 1878 and written in French. As Oliver reads these letters over and over, Marlow finds that they are correspondence between young Beatrice Vignot, an art student and wife of a bureaucrat, and her husband’s much-older uncle, Olivier Vignot. The letters reveal a possible romantic connection between Beatrice and Olivier, though he was forty years her senior.
Slowly, Marlow begins to piece together clues about Oliver, his erratic behavior at the art museum, and his apparent obsession with a long-dead woman. He travels to interview several people from Oliver’s past, including the man’s ex-wife Kate and Mary Bertison, the women Oliver lived with after his divorce. Marlow’s search for answers takes him to destinations in the United States, Mexico, and finally France, where pieces of the puzzle originated and where they finally begin to fall in place.
Several commentators remarked on the length of The Swan Thieves, and while some enjoyed the slow and deliberate pace of the book, others found it to be too long. “I liked Kostova’s leisurely pace (unafraid to digress, she spends more than 10 quietly stunning pages on a visit Marlow pays to his aging father) and lush, slang-free writing, which suit both her subject and her thoughtful characters,” commented Kathy Weissmann in her review for the Bookreporter.com Web site. In contrast, Briscoe remarked, “ The Swan Thieves is a perfectly decent work that needs a machete taken to it. It could be cut by a third. Better still, a half.” Some reviewers also did not think the novel compared well to Kostova’s highly popular The Historian. A Publishers Weekly reviewer, however, remarked, “ The Swan Thieves succeeds both in its echoes of The Historian and as it maps new territory for this canny and successful writer.”
Toronto Globe and Mail reviewer Kate Taylor called The Swan Thieves “highly readable; if Marlow is too bloodless to make his own burgeoning romance of much interest, Oliver’s and Beatrice’s tales are compelling, while Kostova provides magnificently convincing descriptions of the utterly fictional paintings the two artists have created.” While noting that some of the characters’ decisions are not reasonable or logical, a Kirkus Reviews contributor stated, “lush prose and abundant drama will render logic beside the point for most readers.” Kostova’s “luxurious artistic detail and richly drawn characters will pull in readers,” observed Library Journal reviewer Leigh Wright. Joanne Wilkinson, in a Booklist review, named the novel an “extravagantly romantic novel about love, madness, and art.”
The Shadow Land, Kostova reported in an interview with Jessie Chaffee in Words without Borders, is “the story of a young American woman who comes to Bulgaria in 2008, to a chaotic, very-much-post-communist world there, without really knowing anything about the country.” Her name is Alexandra Boyd, and she has come to teach English in the former Soviet-bloc nation to escape demons from her own past. “She’s been in Sofia for only about an hour,” Chaffee continued, “when she finds herself helping an elderly couple and their middle-aged son as they struggle to get into a taxi with their luggage—and then discovers too late that she’s accidentally kept one of their bags, which turns out to contain an urn of human ashes with just a name in Cyrillic letters on it.” She “searches the country for Lazarov’s family,” stated Bethany Latham in Booklist, “while sinister forces attempt to prevent her from exposing devastating truths.”
Alexandra is joined in her search by her English-speaking cabbie Bobby. “Alexandra and Bobby begin to piece together the story of Lazarov’s life, a time-honored way of making one so named rise from the dead,” explained Bethanne Patrick in a review in NPR Books. “Stoyan Lazarov was a gifted violinist whose career was truncated by Communist oppression; now even that story is being suppressed by a contemporary Bulgarian politician. Between the eerie landscape—concrete high-rises, smudgy horizons, unknown flora hanging above cobblestoned streets—and the curious people dogging their every move, the suspenseful parts work.” “Alexandra and Bobby–who gradually reveals that he’s gay and has an impressive resume as, among other things, a poet and political activist–set off to track down Lazarov’s relatives,” said a Kirkus Reviews contributor. “Kostova writes vividly of their travels to Bulgarian places,” stated Brian Truitt in USA Today, “and gives a strong sense of the country’s complicated history, especially coming out of the war in the 1940s when its king was affiliated with the Nazis and Sofia felt the impact of Allied bombs before communism set in.” “A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing,” wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “combine for an engrossing read.” “Those who enjoy a deep dive into the complicated lives of people both historical and contemporary,” declared Connie Williams, writing in School Library Journal, “will love this book.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2009, Jeanne Wilkinson, review of The Swan Thieves, p. 6; February 1, 2017, Bethany Latham, review of The Shadow Land, p. 22.
Bookseller, July 16, 2004, review of The Historian, p. 29.
Dallas Morning News, January 31, 2010, Joy Tipping, review of The Swan Thieves.
Denver Post, June 12, 2005, Brian Richard Boylan, “A Thrill Ride through History,” review of The Historian.
Entertainment Weekly, May 27, 2005, Karen Valby, “Creature Feature: Elizabeth Kostova Kicks off a Season of Must-Reads with Her Chilling New Dracula Thriller The Historian,” p. 103; June 24, 2005, Jennifer Reese, “Neck at Night: Is Elizabeth Kostova’s Vampire Thriller, The Historian a Book You Can Sink Your Teeth Into?,” p. 166; January 15, 2010, Karen Valby, review of The Swan Thieves, p. 74.
Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), January 22, 2010, Kate Taylor, “There’s an Art to Writing Historical Novels,” review of The Swan Thieves.
Guardian (London, England), July 18, 2005, Gary Younge, “Bigger than Dan Brown,” profile of Elizabeth Kostova; January 23, 2010, Joanna Briscoe, “Joanna Briscoe Wishes Elizabeth Kostova Would Bring Back the Vampires,” review of The Swan Thieves.
Houston Chronicle, July 15, 2005, Michael D. Clark,”Creepy Secrets: Inventive, Best-selling Page-turner Lives up to the Hype,” review of The Historian.
Independent (London, England), January 17, 2010, Simmy Richman, review of The Swan Thieves.
Kirkus Reviews, November 9, 2009, review of The Swan Thieves; February 1, 2017, review of The Shadow Land.
Library Journal, June 15, 2005, Patricia Altner, review of The Historian, p. 58; November 1, 2009, Leigh Wright, review of The Swan Thieves, p. 57; January 1, 2017, Elizabeth McArthur, review of The Shadow Land, p. 89.
Miami Herald, June 26, 2005, Connie Ogle, “Stake Out: With Scholarly Intrigue and Globetrotting Adventure, Intriguing Novel Delves Deep into the Myth of Dracula,” review of The Historian.
Newsweek, June 13, 2005, Malcolm Jones, “A High-Stakes Debut, Elizabeth Kostova’s Dracula Novel Drew an Unheard-of $2 Million Advance. Now for the Twist: It Was Worth It,” review of The Historian, p. 74.
New York Daily News, June 12, 2005, Sherryl Connelly, “Vlad Chic: Sprawling Vampire History-Mystery Set to Spike Da Vinci Code Sales,” review of The Historian.
New Yorker, January 25, 2010, review of The Swan Thieves, p. 67.
New York Times, June 13, 2005, Janet Maslin, “Scholarship Trumps the Stake in Pursuit of Dracula,” review of The Historian.
People, July 4, 2005, Jonathan Durbin, review of The Historian, p. 44.
Publishers Weekly, April 11, 2005, review of The Historian, p. 31; April 11, 2005, Anne Sanow, “Vivifying the Undead,” interview with Elizabeth Kostova; November 30, 2009, Katharine Weber, review of The Swan Thieves, p. 28; February 27, 2017, review of The Shadow Land, p. 68.
San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2005, June Sawyers, “Dracula Dead? Not Exactly …,” review of The Historian; January 17, 2010, Regan Upshaw, review of The Swan Thieves.
San Jose Mercury News, June 19, 2005, Charles Matthews, “Putting the Bite On,” review of The Historian.
School Library Journal, March, 2017, Connie Williams, review of The Shadow Land, p. 154.
Seattle Times, July 15, 2005, Deloris Tarzan Ament, “The Historian; Elegant Vampire Story Gets in Your Blood.”
Telegraph (London, England), January 25, 2010, Judith Flanders, review of The Swan Thieves.
Time, June 20, 2005, Lev Grossman, review of The Historian, p. 70.
Times (London, England), July 16, 2005, Saffron Burrows, “The Tooth Is out There.”
USA Today, January 12, 2010, Carol Memmott, “Swan Thieves Glides over Troubled Waters,” p. D6; April 11, 2017, Brian Truitt, review of The Shadow Land.
Washington Post Book World, January 12, 2010, Donna Rifkind, review of The Swan Thieves.
ONLINE
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (August 15, 2010), Kathy Weissman, review of The Swan Thieves.
CollectedMiscellany.com, http://www.collectedmiscellany.com/ (July 8, 2005), review of The Historian.
Elizabeth Kostova Website, http://www.elizabethkostova.com (August 16, 2017), author profile.
January, http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (August 19, 2005), Tony Buschbaum, “Sucker Punch,” review of The Historian.
NPR Books, http://www.npr.org/ (April 16, 2017), Bethanne Patrick, “A Strange Odyssey through Bulgaria in `Shadow Land.'”
Salon.com, http://www.salon.com/ (June 6, 2005), Laura Miller, review of The Historian.
Swan Thieves Website, http://www.theswanthieves.com (August 15, 2010), author profile.
Words without Borders, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ (August 16, 2017), Jessie Chaffee, “An Interview with Elizabeth Kostova.”*
Elizabeth Kostova
E.Kostova.jpg
Born December 26, 1964 (age 52)
New London, Connecticut, United States
Occupation Novelist
Nationality American
Alma mater Yale University
University of Michigan
Period 1980–present
Genre Historical, Gothic
Notable works The Historian
Website
www.elizabethkostova.com
Elizabeth Johnson Kostova (born December 26, 1964) is an American author best known for her debut novel The Historian.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 The Historian
3 Current
4 Bibliography
5 Notes
6 External links
Early life[edit]
Elizabeth Johnson Kostova was born Elizabeth Johnson in New London, Connecticut and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee where she graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University[1] and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she won the 2003 Hopwood Award for her Novel-in-Progress.[2] She is married to a Bulgarian computer programmer.
The Historian[edit]
Kostova's interest in the Dracula legend began with the stories her father told her about the vampire when she was a child.[3] The family lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1972, while her father was teaching at a local university; during that year, the family traveled across Europe. According to Kostova, "It was the formative experience of my childhood."[4][5] She "was fascinated by [her father's Dracula stories] because they were ... from history in a way, even though they weren't about real history, but I heard them in these beautiful historic places."[3] Kostova's interest in books and libraries began early as well. Her mother, a librarian, frequently took her and her sisters to the public library—they were each allowed to check out 30 books and had a special shelf for their library books.[6]
As a child, she listened to recordings of Bulgarian folk music and became interested in the tradition. As an undergraduate at Yale, she sang in and directed a Slavic chorus.[1] In 1989, she and some friends traveled to Eastern Europe, specifically Bulgaria and Bosnia, to study local musical customs. The recordings they made will be deposited in the Library of Congress.[1] While Kostova was in Europe, the Berlin Wall collapsed, heralding the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, events which shaped her understanding of history.[1]
Five years later, in 1994, when Kostova was hiking in the Appalachian Mountains with her husband, she had a flashback to those storytelling moments with her father and asked herself "what if the father were spinning his Dracula tales to his entranced daughter and Dracula was listening in? What if Dracula was still alive?"[5][7] She immediately scratched out seven pages of notes into her writer's notebook. Two days later, she started work on the novel.[7] At the time she was teaching English as a second language, creative writing, and composition classes at universities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and finished the book as she was obtaining her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Michigan.[1][8] In order to write the book, she did extensive research about Eastern Europe and Vlad Țepeș.
Kostova finished the novel in January 2004 and sent it out to a potential literary agent in March.[5] Two months later and within two days of sending out her manuscript to publishers, Kostova was offered a deal—she refused it.[9] The rights to the book were then auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company bought it for US$2 million (US$30,000 is typical for a first novel from an unknown author[10]). Publishers Weekly explained the high price as a bidding war between firms believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp. One vice-president and associate publisher said "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become."[11] Little, Brown, and Co. subsequently sold the rights in 28 countries.[12] The book was published in the United States on 14 June 2005.
The novel blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula and has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller. Kostova was intent on writing a serious work of literature and saw herself as an inheritor of the Victorian style.[3] Although based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Historian is not a horror novel, but rather an eerie tale.[4][13] The novel is concerned with questions about history, its role in society, and how it is represented in books, as well as the nature of good and evil.[9] As Kostova explains, "Dracula is a metaphor for the evil that is so hard to undo in history."[9][14] The evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East.[15][16]
Little, Brown, and Company heavily promoted the book and it became the first debut novel to land at number one on The New York Times bestseller list and as of 2005 was the fastest-selling hardback debut novel in US history.[3][17] In general, the reviews of the novel were mixed.[18] Several reviewers noted that she described the setting of her novel well.[19][20] However, some reviewers criticized the book's structure and its lack of tonal variety.[21] Kostova received the 2006 Book Sense award for Best Adult Fiction and the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year.[22][23] Sony bought the film rights to the novel for $1.5 million.[3]
Current[edit]
In May 2007, the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation was created. The Foundation helps support Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors.[24]
Kostova released her second novel The Swan Thieves on January 12, 2010. She will release her third novel, The Shadow Land, in 2017.[25]
Bibliography[edit]
The Historian (2005)
The Swan Thieves (2010)
The Shadow Land (2017)
Elizabeth Kostova was born in Connecticut in 1964. She is the author of three novels, The Historian (Little, Brown, 2005), The Swan Thieves (Little, Brown, 2010), and The Shadow Land (Random House, 2017). The Historian was the first debut novel in U.S. publishing history to debut at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List, has been translated into 40 languages, and won Quill and Independent Bookseller Awards. The Swan Thieves was also a New York Times Bestseller and has been translated into 28 languages. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in such periodicals and anthologies as The Mississippi Review, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Best American Poetry, The Michigan Quarterly, and Another Chicago Magazine. Kostova has taught in programs at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the University of Michigan, Drexel University, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and Penn State-- as well as at the Sozopol Seminars on the Bulgarian Black Sea and Bear River Writers’ Conference in northern Michigan. She reads and lectures internationally and is co-founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, which provides competitive opportunities for Bulgarian writers and translators, as well as opportunities for native-English writers to travel to Bulgaria. She also serves on the University Council of the American University of Bulgaria in Blagoevgrad and as Vice President of the Pen & Plate Club in North Carolina. She has received awards for service from the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture and the town of Sozopol. Kostova holds a B.A. in British Studies from Yale College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she won Hopwood Awards in both fiction and non-fiction.
WWB Daily
interviews
An Interview with Elizabeth Kostova
By Jessie Chaffee
This month’s issue features Bulgarian literature, and we were fortunate to speak with one of its champions, Elizabeth Kostova, founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. Now celebrating its tenth year, the foundation promotes and supports Bulgarian writers, and connects Bulgarian, American, and British writers and translators through seminars, awards, and opportunities in the field. Bulgaria is also the setting of Elizabeth’s forthcoming novel, The Shadow Land (Penguin Random House, April 2017).
Words Without Borders (WWB): Can you speak a bit about your own relationship with Bulgaria and Bulgarian culture? What inspired your interest in and passion for the country and the culture?
Elizabeth Kostova (EK): I first went to Bulgaria because I’d heard and sung some of its famous folk music and wanted to see the place it came from; I arrived there with a couple of college friends in November 1989, just a week after the Berlin Wall fell, to do fieldwork on village singing. We took the overnight train from Belgrade to Sofia, and I woke early that morning to see the first mountains of western Bulgaria coming into view. I remember having the strange feeling that I was coming home to something. I stayed in the country six months, visiting towns, villages, and city choirs, and watching the monolith of communism coming down with a lot of shock and dust. Everywhere we went, I was moved by the beauty of the natural landscapes, the evidence of ancient civilizations crossing that patch of earth, the tragedy of Bulgaria’s recent past, and people’s kindness and hospitality. While I was there, I met my future husband, who came to live in the US. with me. We’ve been back there many times over a quarter century and I’ve seen the unfolding of a freer but also neglected and corrupt post-communist world there. I continue to love the place.
WWB: The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (EKF) is now in its tenth year (congratulations!). What initially inspired you to create the foundation?
EK: Thank you! In 2005, I published a first novel (The Historian) that takes place partly in Bulgaria of the 1950s, and through that met many writers, translators, and publishers. I was struck by the dearth of programs and awards and other forms of encouragement for those professions there and I knew I wanted to give back something to the country that has inspired me as a writer. I created EKF—of which I’m now only a small part—with publisher Svetlozar Zhelev, and it has been an unprecedented success and support in the country’s literary life, if I do say so! A great deal of the credit for that goes to our fabulous director, Milena Deleva, in New York, and her associate in Sofia, Simona Ilieva. It’s been a joy for me to work on these projects with so many gifted and energetic people.
I knew I wanted to give back something to the country that has inspired me as a writer.
WWB: Has the foundation’s mission and scope changed in the decade since its creation?
EK: We’ve stuck very closely to our original multi-faceted mission: to bring together Bulgarian literary professionals and their colleagues from the Anglophone world; to create fair, competitive, juried awards and other opportunities in the field; to reward the work of outstanding translators in both language directions (English/Bulgarian, Bulgarian/English); to establish the workshop model of discussing writing; and to get all this wonderful contemporary literature from Bulgaria into English—and promoted worldwide. You can see many of these authors and samples of their work on our extensive site dedicated to them.
Image: Participants in the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, 2016. Photo © Anthony Georgieff.
WWB: What types of programming and opportunities does the foundation offer?
EK: Our big show is the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, held every June in the beautiful Black Sea coast town of Sozopol. Through global, juried competition, we accept five emerging writers from Bulgaria and five from all over the English-writing world for a week of intensive workshops and presentations. It’s such a moving, fun, serious, productive gathering each year! This event also features public lectures by distinguished writers from each language—in recent years we’ve been honored to host Georgi Gospodinov, Richard Russo, Deyan Enev, Alex Miller, Ilija Trojanow, Claire Messud, Kristin Dimitrova, Barry Lopez, Alek Popov, and Rana Dasgupta, among many others—and panel discussions with pretty amazing rosters of writers, editors, translators, publishers, and critics from the US, UK, Bulgaria, and sometimes other countries as well. Translation is always a major theme at the Sozopol Seminar. A lot of collaborations spring up there, often continuing far beyond that one week. This June, we’re holding a one-time nonfiction seminar to celebrate our tenth anniversary. That has a great line-up, too.
We also sponsor the annual Krastan Dyankov Award for translation of a contemporary literary work from English into Bulgarian, which has become a major force in Bulgarian letters. And we cooperate with Open Letter Press to sponsor a Bulgarian translator to study publishing and editing in Rochester with them. Two years ago, we held Bulgaria’s first working international poetry conference since the fall of the Wall. We also host all kinds of readings and theater events in both Bulgaria and the US. Some years ago, we brought Orhan Pamuk to speak and read in Bulgaria for the first time in his career.
For a complete list of our programs, and information about participating, readers can check out our main website. It’s been an exciting ten years for us, beyond what I even hoped for when we set out on this path, and we owe a lot to our own numerous sponsors in Europe and the US.
WWB: From your perspective, has the literary scene in Bulgaria changed significantly in the last ten years? Have the types of literary work being produced changed?
EK: When I first started really paying attention there, I noticed there wasn’t very much writing—in any genre except journalism—that attempted to deal head-on with the communist past, which is still keenly recent and has a continued impact on society there. (Of course, there are brilliant exceptions to that generalization.) Many Bulgarian writers seemed to be finding their way into literature through fables and magical realism. This has changed some in the last ten years, and there seems now to be a wider range of experiences, places, and historical subjects in contemporary writing coming out of the country—and also a wider range in terms of tone and attitude.
Image: The 2016 Krastan Dyankov Awards. Courtesy of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation.
WWB: Can you share a few of your favorite success stories—either writers who have gone on to be better recognized because of the foundation’s support or partnerships that have been inspired by the foundation?
EK: I’m really proud as an American writer to see the increased number of Bulgarian books published in English. When we began our work ten years ago, there were only two or three contemporary Bulgarian literary works in print in English—now there are nearly twenty. Many of these have come about through work by wonderful publishers who come to Sozopol and then stay interested in bringing out Bulgarian writers—Open Letter, Istros Books, Peter Owen, and others. When I look at just the books listed on our site now, I can hardly believe it. I’m also grateful to the several editors of literary/translation magazines and other venues who’ve now worked with us to host first-ever Bulgarian special issues and features—very much including Words Without Borders.
I’ve also enjoyed the individual stories I’ve seen unfold—for example, the American writer who came to Sozopol as a workshop fellow and has since published (in the US) almost a dozen different interviews with Bulgarian writers and reviews of their work. I think about some of the barely published younger writers from each language who published books after having been at Sozopol Seminars—that’s mostly their own work, of course, but I like to think they received some real encouragement there. I also think of the passionate young Bulgarian professional translator who started attending an annual translation “atelier” we hold in Sofia, decided to try translating fiction for the first time, worked very hard to learn her new craft, won one of our US. translation residencies, and finally won a Dyankov Award—a truly impressive trajectory. And the distinguished American poet who’s now working with a Bulgarian translator toward a book to be published in Sofia. And the four or five young Americans who had never been to Bulgaria until they attended the seminar, and subsequently sought out and won Fulbrights and other teaching jobs in the region. I think I can say without risk or immodesty that EKF has been crucial for many people in their decisions to pursue writing or translation as a profession.
When we began our work ten years ago, there were only two or three contemporary Bulgarian literary works in print in English—now there are nearly twenty.
WWB: What up-and-coming Bulgarian writers should we keep an eye out for?
EK: Honestly, there are so many interesting writers coming out of Bulgaria—and now often into English—that I probably shouldn’t list names, or I’ll miss someone! I’m especially happy to see writers in their twenties and thirties doing a lot of vigorous work there now. The teenage writers who participate in our Sofia programs are also inspiring.
WWB: Can you speak a bit about your forthcoming novel (pictured left), which is set in Bulgaria? What inspired it, and what types of research did you need to do to realize it?
EK: The Shadow Land, which will be out from Random House in the US on April 11, is partly the result of my many years of visiting and traveling in Bulgaria and partly the result of research. It’s the story of a young American woman who comes to Bulgaria in 2008, to a chaotic, very-much-post-communist world there, without really knowing anything about the country. She’s been in Sofia for only about an hour when she finds herself helping an elderly couple and their middle-aged son as they struggle to get into a taxi with their luggage—and then discovers too late that she’s accidentally kept one of their bags, which turns out to contain an urn of human ashes with just a name in Cyrillic letters on it. So the novel is the story of her trying to do the right thing, trying to find these total strangers, and learning about a whole life under communism along the way. It has a very dark core but it’s also a travel book, an odyssey through the beautiful landscapes I loved from my first visit in Bulgaria. It’s also very much a book about political repression—and suppression—and I’m glad to be bringing it out at this exact political moment. To write The Shadow Land, I read a lot of oral histories, talked with older Bulgarians and with journalists, and traveled to spots I hadn’t visited before or knew I wanted to write about. Writing and researching it made me look at my second country in a whole new way, and appreciate Bulgarian writers and artists even more.
Published Mar 6, 2017 Copyright 2017 Jessie Chaffee
The Shadow Land
264.9 (Feb. 27, 2017): p68.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Shadow Land
Elizabeth Kostova. Ballantine, $28 (496p) ISBN 978-0-345-52786-8
A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing combine for an engrossing read set in the former Soviet-bloc nation of Bulgaria. Not long after Alexandra Boyd's 2008 arrival in Sofia to teach English, she ends up with the wrong suitcase, which holds the remains of one Stoyan Lazarov in a carved box. She is determined to return it to the elderly couple traveling with their son, a handsome man who eventually haunts her dreams. Helping her on this quest is Asparuh Iliev, aka Bobby, an inscrutable taxi driver who believes in his nation's beauty but fears for its future under the possible leadership of a powerful and wealthy politician whose anticorruption campaign is gaining political traction. They learn Lazarov was a talented violinist who faced political oppression. A parallel story line tells of Lazarov's life. His attempt to become a concertmaster by currying favor with his orchestra's Communist conductor has tragic consequences, setting up Kostova's (The Historian) most emotional and harrowing moments. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Shadow Land." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 68. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671137&it=r&asid=833ecb2c2ab7a962b4761c3a08951474. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485671137
The Shadow Land
Bethany Latham
113.11 (Feb. 1, 2017): p22.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Shadow Land.
By Elizabeth Kostova.
Apr. 2017. 496p. Ballantine, $28 (9780345527868).
On her first day in Bulgaria, American Alexandra Boyd acquires the ashes of violinist Stoyan Lazarov when she encounters a trio of Bulgarians and inadvertently keeps their bag. Boyd searches the country for Lazarov's family while sinister forces attempt to prevent her from exposing devastating truths. Occasionally reading like a travelogue, this novel is replete with extensive character description and authorial flourish. The pacing is leisurely, with recurring visits to previously encountered locales and expository characters, before a denouement that carefully threads together and ties off all story lines. Historical detail and a dual-time-period narrative is achieved with Lazarov's memoir of 1950s Communist Bulgaria, a tale strongly reminiscent of Holocaust fiction, adding appeal for fans of that genre. Kostova's phenomenally successful debut, The Historian (2005), was an international, period-jumping, doorstop literary thriller that relied heavily on epistolary elements. Her second novel, The Swan Thieves (2010), followed structural suit, and after seven years, her highly anticipated latest stays true to an exceedingly appealing pattern. Recommend Kostova's latest to readers seeking outstanding and suspenseful historical fiction.--Bethany Latham
HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Substantial prepublication buzz about best-selling Kostova makes this a must-buy for fiction collections.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Latham, Bethany. "The Shadow Land." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 22. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481244766&it=r&asid=3a5fd6c177d68e37de7a92cbc615fa8a. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481244766
Kostova, Elizabeth: THE SHADOW LAND
(Feb. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Kostova, Elizabeth THE SHADOW LAND Ballantine (Adult Fiction) $28.00 4, 11 ISBN: 978-0-345-52786-8
Searching for the owners of a mysterious urn that's fallen into her possession, a young American traveler takes a weeklong drive through Bulgaria guided by an enigmatic cabdriver in Kostova's (The Swan Thieves, 2010, etc.) exploration of the price paid for love and art to survive under a brutal political regime.It's 2008. Alexandra Boyd, 26, has just arrived in Bulgaria from the Blue Ridge Mountains to teach English, and her cabdriver has accidentally dropped her off at an expensive hotel instead of the hostel where she's booked. Before finding another taxi for herself, she helps an elderly couple and the handsome middle-aged man accompanying them into their own cab, only to realize minutes later that she's taken one of their satchels. Inside she finds an urn containing the ashes of a man named Stoyan Lazarov, according to the label. Her English-speaking cabdriver, Bobby, reluctantly agrees to take her to the police station, where the officer in charge makes a call, then gives her an address where she might find the dead man's family. Alexandra and Bobby--who gradually reveals that he's gay and has an impressive resume as, among other things, a poet and political activist--set off to track down Lazarov's relatives. As they travel from lead to lead, they learn his history in connected narratives that carry the novel back to World War II and the Cold War era, when Lazarov's career as a violinist was destroyed after he spent time in an inhumane prison camp. A mood of threat takes over when Alexandra and Bobby realize they are being tracked by someone who doesn't want inconvenient truths exposed. While picaresque hero Bobby steals the readers' hearts, the romance Kostova drums up for Alexandra elsewhere and the back story of her guilt over a dead brother feel shoehorned into the novel, pallid in comparison to the drama of Bulgarian politics over the last 70 years. Kostova's passion and tragic sense of history, along with jewellike character studies, almost make up for the overplotting and repetitiveness as she drums her points home.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Kostova, Elizabeth: THE SHADOW LAND." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479234638&it=r&asid=07dd838c4b2fe153267caf121d60d195. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479234638
Kostova, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land
Elizabeth McArthur
142.1 (Jan. 1, 2017): p89.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
* Kostova, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land. Ballantine. Apr. 2017.496p. ISBN 9780345527868. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780345527882. F
Alexandra, an American in her mid-20s, has decided to start life anew in Bulgaria. Soon after she lands in Sofia, her plans go awry when she discovers a stranger's bag among her own. Even more troubling, inside the bag is a box of cremated remains. While attempting to return the box, Alexandra becomes embroiled in a mystery that encompasses Bulgarian history from before World War II to the Bulgarian coup d'etat of 1944 that led to a communist state and through the present. On her adventure through the Bulgarian countryside, she is accompanied by an enigmatic taxi driver and meets many other interesting, rich characters. VERDICT This third novel from Kostova (The Historian; The Swan Thieves) will delight the author's fans. A slight hint of the mystical will appeal to readers who enjoyed Deborah Harkness's "All Souls" trilogy, while the mystery and thriller aspects will keep fans of Dan Brown and Umberto Eco reading. A fantastic book club pick. [See Prepub Alert, 10/17/16.]--Elizabeth McArthur, Bexar Cty. Digital Lib., BiblioTech, San Antonio
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McArthur, Elizabeth. "Kostova, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land." Library Journal, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 89. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476562315&it=r&asid=2692d26af200d30b2778ef4ef33314c9. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476562315
Kostova, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land
Connie Williams
63.3 (Mar. 2017): p154.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
KOSTOVA, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land. 496p. ebook available. Ballantine. Apr. 2017. Tr $28. ISBN 9780345527868.
Alexandra, 26, is headed to her new job teaching English in Bulgaria when, exhausted from hours of traveling and confused at having been dropped off at the wrong hotel, she reaches out to help an elderly woman get into a cab. As the car pulls away, Alexandra hails a taxi to take her to her hostel but discovers that she has accidentally picked up the old woman's satchel, which contains a beautiful box labeled with the name Stoyan Lazarov and filled with ashes. This is the story of her hunt to track down Stoyan Lazarov's family and return his remains to them. After checking in with the local police, Alexandra and her cab driver, Bobby, set off to locate the urn's owner. Following a slim trail of clues, they learn that the Communist takeover of Bulgaria came with an iron fist that enslaved thousands of suspected resistors, including the gentle Stoyan Lazarov. The more clues they uncover, the more the past catches up with them, until they, too, become a part of the mystery and find themselves in grave danger. This novel brings a horrific period of history to life, encapsulated in a mystery and stoked by Alexandra's determination to return Stoyan Lazarov to his family regardless of the danger. Interweaving tales juxtapose the past with the present as the mystery unfolds. VERDICT Those who enjoy a deep dive into the complicated lives of people both historical and contemporary will love this book.--Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CA
Williams, Connie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Williams, Connie. "Kostova, Elizabeth. The Shadow Land." School Library Journal, Mar. 2017, p. 154. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA484628547&it=r&asid=08af2c711974929863e715d5c5190335. Accessed 26 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A484628547
A Strange Odyssey Through Bulgaria In 'Shadow Land'
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Email
April 16, 20177:00 AM ET
BETHANNE PATRICK
The Shadow Land
The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova
Hardcover, 478 pages purchase
In 2005, I read a book so suspenseful, so laden with longing that I could not put it down: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. In 2010, her sophomore effort, The Swan Thieves, thrilled me slightly less, but made up for its lack of suspense with a delicate dance through the world of fine art. However, both novels lacked something else — a sense of grounding and purpose. I could sense it somewhere not far off, but it didn't yet exist.
Happily, Kostova has found that something else in her new book, The Shadow Land, in which she returns to the Eastern European terrain of The Historian — but this time it's not a fictional landscape based on tales of Dracula, it's the real topography of present-day Bulgaria. Some readers will already know that Kostova first visited Bulgaria in 1989, where she met her husband Georg Kostov. (It's important to note that Kostova was not on a whirlwind weekend holiday; she went to Bulgaria to study its folksongs. Her interest in the country is deep.)
The Shadow Land opens in 2008, as a young American woman named Alexandra Boyd arrives in Sofia to teach English. When her cab driver drops her at the wrong hotel, she has a brief encounter with an elderly couple and winds up holding their satchel — which holds an urn labeled as the remains of a man named Stoyan Lazarov. Her new cabbie, who goes by "Bobby," takes her to the police station, which sets the pair off on a strange odyssey through the Bulgarian countryside, searching for Lazarov's relatives. (Alexandra feels beholden to do so, and it's partly personal, but more on that in a moment.)
Article continues after sponsorship
Fortunately for Alexandra, "Bobby" (real name: Asparuh Iliev) isn't a serial killer, but a part-time poet and political activist who quickly gains sympathy for his passenger's quest. He is also, we learn in a slightly clunky scene, gay — no worries that this will turn into a romantic road trip. Although the scene is clunky, the relationship that grows between Alexandra and Bobby is not. Yes, it's a plot device, but Kostova allows the two to develop a rapport based on Bobby's knowledge of his country and Alexandra's admiration for it. From ancient monastery to roadside bistro to Bobby's aunt's house and onward, their camaraderie is quiet and genuine.
Kostova's 'Swan Thieves': Art, Love and Crime
THE WEEK'S BEST STORIES FROM NPR BOOKS
Kostova's 'Swan Thieves': Art, Love and Crime
New Blood for Dracula Fans in 'The Historian'
BOOKS
New Blood for Dracula Fans in 'The Historian'
As they travel, Alexandra and Bobby begin to piece together the story of Lazarov's life, a time-honored way of making one so named rise from the dead. Stoyan Lazarov was a gifted violinist whose career was truncated by Communist oppression; now even that story is being suppressed by a contemporary Bulgarian politician. Between the eerie landscape — concrete high-rises, smudgy horizons, unknown flora hanging above cobblestoned streets — and the curious people dogging their every move, the suspenseful parts work.
What doesn't work, and it pains me to say this as so much of the book is good, is the backstory of Alexandra's brother, Jack. Yes, it's good to know that there's pain in her history, pain that drives her to seek a resting place for Lazarov's ashes, but it could have been dealt with in a single chapter. That's not because the writing is awkward in the backstory scenes, but because the book's beating heart is in Bulgaria, and each time we stray back to Alexandra's family in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we lose that focus.
Fortunately, there are compensations. In the second part of the novel, several chapters go back to Stoyan Lazarov and his enigmatic sister-in-law Irina Georgievna's life during World War II, and in these, Kostova captures not just the rhythms of Bulgaria's everyday past, but its proud and uneven political history, too. Not only do these scenes provide that grounding I mentioned earlier — they allow Kostova to show us her deep love for her adopted homeland. Her wonder at its survival and abiding mysteries is summed up in what Bobby says to Alexandra, about midway through their odyssey: "My country has come a long way in a short time, in spite of everything. I think we have something special to give the world — culture, and lessons from history. And beauty. It would be tragic for us to go backward. We have already suffered too much."
When Kostova focuses on that beauty, through characters' reminiscences, folktales, poetry, and news, her book transcends its covers and offers readers a glimpse of her own heart.
Bethanne Patrick is a freelance writer and critic who tweets @TheBookMaven.
Kostova's tale of Bulgarian violinist tugs at heartstrings
Brian Truitt , USA TODAY 6:04 a.m. EDT April 11, 2017
Elizabeth Kostova goes to modern-day Bulgaria to explore the sins of the country’s communist past — and the talented musician who became a victim of it — in her new novel The Shadow Land (Ballantine, 476 pp., *** out of four stars).
Lyrical prose, political mystery and a descriptive look back at life in the post-World War II Eastern Bloc ultimately make this latest book by the author of the best-selling The Historian a satisfying read. But readers first must slog through Shadow Land's first quarter, a ponderous travelogue that introduces Kostova’s lead characters.
Alexandra Boyd is a young North Carolina woman who has moved to Sofia to escape an earlier tragedy and start anew as a teacher in the Bulgarian capital city. On her tiring first day in country, a mixup in luggage with three older folks at a hotel leaves Alexandra with an urn containing the remains of a mysterious man named Stoyan Lazarov.
Alexandra meets kind yet enigmatic cabbie Bobby, and with a definite lack of helpful clues, the two move between villages, monasteries and other small locales outside of Sofia trying to get Stoyan’s ashes back home — or at least to someone who knew the guy. Sightsee, talk to locals, get a next address but no actual phone number to call. Rinse, repeat.
The pace finally picks up when they discover that Stoyan was a world-class Bulgarian violinist who came back home in 1944 from Vienna with Hitler on the march. The recently deceased musician has a story to tell as well, and his emotional and often touching tale involves a young love, ambition to become concertmaster of his orchestra, and a brutal prison-labor camp run in secret whose violent legacy looms in the present for Alexandra and Bobby.
Author Elizabeth Kostova.
Author Elizabeth Kostova. (Photo: Lynne Harty Photography)
Kostova writes vividly of their travels to Bulgarian places and gives a strong sense of the country’s complicated history, especially coming out of the war in the 1940s when its king was affiliated with the Nazis and Sofia felt the impact of Allied bombs before communism set in and brought its own iron rule.
The author’s primary players are solid if not particularly strong — Alexandra’s American backstory is interesting though wasted as the narrative shifts to Stoyan. He is the novel's highlight who gets the reader’s empathy: Vivaldi and the hope for a child get him through hard times, and Kostova's best writing comes when investigating Stoyan and his music.
When Alexandra is poking through the home he’s left behind and his collection of scores, Kostova describes how Alexandra thinks “about how a person’s life could be distilled into so little — the person in the ashes, the work a shelf of melodies dead to the air.”
The Shadow Land is an intriguing examination of Bulgarian culture and way of life, now and in decades past, for Western eyes. And if you can get through the relentlessly slow first 133 pages, this novel in the end deftly showcases how even the dead have ways of teaching about living.
LIFE NEWSLETTER
News, reviews, and the juiciest
celebrity gossip for the refined scenester.
Your Email
Sign Me Up