（外文电子版资料）The Historian.docVIP

THE HISTORIAN By Elizabeth Kostova ? THE HISTORIAN By Elizabeth Kostova ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Kostova graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award for the Novel-in-Progress. ? Copyright ? 2005 by Elizabeth Kostova ? ISBN: 0-7595-1385-6 ? Little, Brown and Company, Time Warner Book Group 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 ? Visit our Web site at ? First eBook Edition: June 2005 ? The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. ? For my father, who first told me some of these stories A Note to the Reader ? The story that follows is one I never intended to commit to paper. Recently, however, a shock of sorts has prompted me to look back over the most troubling episodes of my life and of the lives of the several people I loved best. This is the story of how as a girl of sixteen I went in search of my father and his past, and of how he went in search of his beloved mentor and his mentor’s own history, and of how we all found ourselves on one of the darkest pathways into history. It is the story of who survived that search and who did not, and why. As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw. In the thirty-six years since these events transpired, my life has been relatively quiet. I have devoted my time to research and uneventful travel, to my students and friends, to the writing of books of a historical and mainly impersonal nature, and to the affairs of the university in which I have ultimately taken shelter. In reviewing the past, I’ve been fortunate in having access to most of the personal documents in question, because they have been in my possession for many years. Where I felt it appropriate, I’ve