The Historian - first US edition

by Elizabeth Kostova - signed

The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also . . .

Book has black boards quarter-bound in red cloth; 656 pages; maps on end papers. Signed and dated June 20th 2005 (the week of publication) on the title page. Jacket is price-intact at $25.95.