"Elizabeth Kostova's debut novel "The Historian" is an epic vampire tale peopled by anthropologists and historians, capitalists and communists, Muslims and Christians, those who are fully alive and those who are "undead." They all have one thing in common: They love books. So much the better if the books are old with soft leather covers and crumbling pages; so much the better if these very old books contain puzzling maps and pictures of dragons."

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