The Blood Countess
A Novel
Published on 21. July 2015
342 pages
978-1-5040-1526-4 (ISBN)
Description
A "brilliant" novel of Elizabeth Bathory, the notorious sixteenth-century Hungarian aristocrat who bathed in the blood of virgins (
St. Petersburg Times).
Turmoil reigns in post-Soviet Hungary when journalist Drake Bathory-Kereshtur returns from America to grapple with his family history. He's haunted by the legacy of his ancestor, the notorious sixteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is said to have murdered more than 650 young virgins and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth. Interweaving past and present, The Blood Countess tells the stories of Elizabeth's debauched and murderous reign and Drake's fascination with the eternal clashes of faith and power, violence and beauty. Codrescu traces the captivating origins of the countess's obsessions in tandem with the emerging political fervor of the reporter, building the narratives into an unforgettable, bloody crescendo.
Taut and intense, The Blood Countess is a riveting novel that deftly straddles the genres of historical fiction, thriller, horror, and family drama.
Turmoil reigns in post-Soviet Hungary when journalist Drake Bathory-Kereshtur returns from America to grapple with his family history. He's haunted by the legacy of his ancestor, the notorious sixteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is said to have murdered more than 650 young virgins and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth. Interweaving past and present, The Blood Countess tells the stories of Elizabeth's debauched and murderous reign and Drake's fascination with the eternal clashes of faith and power, violence and beauty. Codrescu traces the captivating origins of the countess's obsessions in tandem with the emerging political fervor of the reporter, building the narratives into an unforgettable, bloody crescendo.
Taut and intense, The Blood Countess is a riveting novel that deftly straddles the genres of historical fiction, thriller, horror, and family drama.
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Andrei Codrescu | Piers Blofeld
The Blood Countess
Book
06/1996
Quartet Books
€32.38
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Person
Andrei Codrescu (www.codrescu.com) is the editor of
Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Books & Ideas (www.corpse.org). Born in Romania, Codrescu immigrated to the United States in 1966. His first collection of poetry,
License to Carry a Gun (1970), won the Big Table Younger Poets Award, and his latest,
So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968-2012(2012), was a National Book Award finalist. He is the author of the novels
The Blood Countess,
Messi@,
Casanova in Bohemia, and
Wakefield. His other titles include
Zombification: Essays from NPR;
The Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape;
New Orleans, Mon Amour;
The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution;
Ay, Cuba!: A Socio-Erotic Journey;
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess;
Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments;
The Poetry Lesson; and
Bibliodeath: My Archives (With Life in Footnotes
).
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
Codrescu is the recipient of an ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and the Peabody Award for the movie Road Scholar. Until retiring in 2009, he was the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University.
Content
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Epigraph
- Prefatory Note
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright Page
