The Shadow Land

The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova
The Shadow Land

The Shadow Land

by Elizabeth Kostova

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Overview

From the #1 bestselling author of The Historian comes a mesmerizing novel that spans the past and the present—and unearths the troubled history of a gorgeous but haunted country.

A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi—and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes.

As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by political oppression—and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger.

Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss.

Praise for The Shadow Land

“A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing combine for an engrossing read.”—Publishers Weekly

“In The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova, a master storyteller, brings vividly to life an unfamiliar country—Bulgaria—and a painful history that feels particularly relevant now. You won’t want to put down this remarkable book.”—Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs

“In this brilliant work, what appears at first a minor mystery quickly becomes emblematic of a whole country’s hidden history. Lyrical and compelling, The Shadow Land proves a profound meditation on how evil is inflicted, endured, and, through courage and compassion, defeated. Elizabeth Kostova’s third novel clearly establishes her as one of America’s finest writers.”—Ron Rash, author of The Risen

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780345527882
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/11/2017
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 496
Sales rank: 301,909
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Elizabeth Kostova is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Swan Thieves and The Historian. She graduated from Yale and holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award for Novel-in-Progress. She is also co-founder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing in Bulgaria.

Read an Excerpt

One

Sofia, the year 2008. The month of May, impeccable spring weather, and the goddess Capitalism sitting on her long-­since-­tawdry throne. On the top step outside Hotel Forest hovered a young woman, more a girl than a woman, and more a foreigner—­which she also was—­than anything else. The hotel looked out over NDK, the former communist regime’s palace of culture, a giant concrete blossom now patrolled by teenagers; sunlight falling across the plaza glinted off their spiky heads. Alexandra Boyd, exhausted from an endless plane ride, stood watching the Bulgarian kids on their skateboards and trying to tuck her long straight hair behind one ear. To her right rose apartment buildings of ochre and gray stucco, as well as more recent glass-­and-­steel construction and a billboard that showed a woman in a bikini whose breasts surged out toward a bottle of vodka. Stately trees bloomed near the billboard, white and magenta—­horse chestnuts, which Alexandra had seen during a trip to France in college, her only other time on the European continent. Her eyes were gritty, her scalp grimed with the sweat of travel. She needed to eat, shower, sleep—­yes, sleep, after the final flight from Amsterdam, that jerking awake every few minutes into self-­exile across an ocean. She glanced down at her feet to make sure they were still there. Except for a pair of bright red sneakers, her clothes were simple—­thin blouse, blue jeans, a sweater tied around her waist—­so that she felt dowdy next to the tailored skirts and stilettos that made their way past her. On her left wrist, she wore a wide black bracelet; in her ears, spears of obsidian. She gripped the handles of a rolling suitcase and a dark satchel containing a guidebook, a dictionary, extra clothes. Over her shoulder she carried a computer bag and her loose multicolored purse with a notebook and a paperback of Emily Dickinson at the very bottom.

From her plane window, Alexandra had seen a city cradled in mountains and flanked by towering apartment buildings like tombstones. Stepping off the plane with her new camera in her hand, she’d breathed unfamiliar air—­coal and diesel and then a gust that smelled of plowed earth. She had walked across the tarmac and onto the airport bus, observed shiny new customs booths and their taciturn officials, the exotic stamp in her passport. Her taxi had looped around the edges of Sofia and into the heart of the city—­a longer route than necessary, she now suspected—­brushing past outdoor café tables and lampposts that bore political placards or signs for sex shops. From the taxi window, she’d photographed ancient Fords and Opels, new Audis with tinted gangster windows, large slow buses, and trolleys like clanking Megalosauruses that threw sparks from their iron rails. To her amazement, she’d seen that the center of the city was paved with yellow cobblestones.

But the driver had somehow misunderstood her request and dropped her here, at Hotel Forest, not at the hostel she’d booked weeks earlier. Alexandra hadn’t understood the situation, either, until he was gone and she had mounted the steps of the hotel to get a closer look. Now she was alone, more thoroughly than she had ever been in her twenty-­six years. In the middle of the city, in the middle of a history about which she had no real idea, among people who went purposefully up and down the steps of the hotel, she stood wondering whether to descend and try to get another taxi. She doubted she could afford the glass and cement monolith that loomed at her back, with its tinted windows, its crow-­like clients in dark suits hustling in and out or smoking on the steps. One thing seemed certain: she was in the wrong place.

Alexandra might have stood this way long minutes more, but suddenly the doors slid open just behind her and she turned to see three people coming out of the hotel. One of them was a white-­haired man in a wheelchair clutching several travel bags against his suit jacket. A tall middle-­aged man held onto the chair with one hand and a cell phone with the other; he was speaking with someone. Beside him stood their companion, an old woman with one hand on the tall man’s elbow and a purse dangling from her wrist, bowlegged beneath her black dress. Her hair was auburn, with streaks of gray that radiated from a painfully bare parting. The middle-­aged man finished his call and hung up. The old lady looked up at him and he bent over to tell her something.

Alexandra moved aside and watched them struggle across the hotel landing to the top of the steps and felt, as she often did, a stab of compassion for other people’s fates. There was no way for them to descend, no ramp or wheelchair access, as there would have been at home. But the dark-­haired tall man appeared to be magically strong; he bent and lifted the older man out of the chair, taking his luggage along. And the woman seemed to come alive inside her empty gaze, long enough to fold the chair with a few practiced motions and carry it slowly down the steps—­she, too, was stronger than she looked.

Alexandra picked up her own satchels and suitcase and followed them, feeling that their sense of purpose might propel her forward. At the bottom of the steps, the tall man put the old man back into the wheelchair. They all rested a moment, Alexandra standing almost next to them at the edge of the taxi lane. She saw that the tall man was dressed in a black vest and an immaculate white shirt, too warm and formal for the day. His trousers were also too shiny, his black shoes too highly polished. His thick dark hair, with its sheen of silver, was brushed firmly back from his forehead. A strong profile. Up close he looked younger than she’d first thought him. He was frowning, his face flushed, glance sharp. It was hard for her to tell whether he was nearer to thirty-­eight or fifty-­five. She realized through her fatigue that he might be one of the handsomest men she’d ever observed, broad-­shouldered and dignified under his somehow out-­of-­date clothes, his nose long and elegant, the cheekbones flowing up toward narrow bright eyes when he turned slightly in her direction. Fine grooves radiated from the edges of his mouth, as if he had a different face that he reserved for smiling. She saw that he was too old for her after all. His hand hung at his side, only a few feet from one of hers. She felt an actual twinge of desire, and took a step away.

Now the tall man went over to the window of the nearest taxi and plunged into some sort of negotiation; the taxi driver’s voice rose in protest; Alexandra wondered if she might learn something from all this. While she was watching, she had a moment of vertigo, so that the traffic receded to an uncomfortable buzz in her ears and then returned louder—­jet lag. The tall man could not seem to come to an agreement with the driver, even when the old woman leaned in and added indignant words of her own. The driver waved a dismissive hand and rolled up his window.

The tall man picked up their luggage again, three or four nylon and canvas bags, and stepped to another taxi, even nearer to where Alexandra stood. She resolved not to try the first driver herself. Then the tall man abruptly concluded his bargaining and opened the back door of this acceptable new cab. He set their luggage down on the sidewalk and helped the crooked figure out of the wheelchair and into the back seat.

Alexandra wouldn’t have moved toward them again if the old woman hadn’t suddenly stumbled, trying to get into the taxi beside the old man. Alexandra reached out and caught the woman’s upper arm in a firm sudden grip she hadn’t known herself capable of. Through the black fabric of the sleeve, she could feel a bone, surprisingly light and warm. The woman turned to stare at her, then righted herself and said something in Bulgarian, and the tall man looked fully around at Alexandra for the first time. Maybe he wasn’t really handsome, she thought; it was just that his eyes were remarkable—­larger than they’d seemed from the side, the irises amber when the sunlight touched them. He and the old lady both smiled at her; he helped his mother carefully into the seat of the taxi, reaching back with his other hand for their bags. It was as if he knew Alexandra would come to their rescue again. And she did, catching the smaller bags up in a tangle and passing them to him. He seemed to be in a hurry now. She kept a grip on her own heavy satchel and laptop, and especially on her purse, just in case.

He straightened up and glanced down at the bags she had handed to him. Then he looked at her again.

“Thank you very much,” he said to her in heavily accented English—­was it so obvious that she was a foreigner?

“Can I help you?” she asked, and felt foolish.

“You already helped me,” he said. Now his face was sad, the momentary smile gone. “Are you in Bulgaria for a vacation?”

“No,” she said. “To teach. Are you visiting Sofia from somewhere else?” After she said this, she realized it might not sound complimentary. It was true that he and his elderly parents did not look cosmopolitan in this setting. But he was the first person she had really spoken to in almost two days, and she didn’t want to stop, although the old man and the old woman were waiting for him in the cab.

He shook his head. She had read in her guidebook that Bulgarians traditionally nodded to mean “no” and shook their heads to mean “yes,” but that not everyone did this anymore. She wondered which category the tall man fell into.

“Our plan—­it was to go to Velin Monastery,” he said. He glanced behind him, as if expecting to see someone else. “It is very pretty and famous. You must visit it.”

She liked his voice. “Yes, I’ll try to do that,” she said.

He did smile then—­slightly, without activating all the grooves. He smelled of soap, and of clean wool. He started to turn away, but paused. “Do you like Bulgaria? People say that it is the place where anything will happen. Can happen,” he corrected himself.

Alexandra hadn’t been even in Sofia long enough to know what she thought of the country.

“It’s beautiful,” she said finally, and saying this reminded her of the mountains she had seen as she flew in. “Really beautiful,” she added with more conviction.

He inclined his head to one side, seemed to bow a little—­polite people, Bulgarians—­and turned toward the cab.

“May I take your picture?” she said quickly. “Would you mind? You’re the first people I’ve talked with here.” She wanted a photograph of him—­the most interesting face she’d ever seen, and now would never see again.

The tall man bent obligingly close to the open cab door, although he looked anxious. She had the impression that he was in a hurry. But the old woman leaned out toward Alexandra with a smile of her own: dentures, too white and regular. The old man did not turn; he sat gazing ahead in the back seat of the taxi. Alexandra pulled her camera out of her purse and took a swift shot. She wondered if she should offer to send the picture to them, later, but she wasn’t sure that elderly people in this country—­or a formal-­looking middle-­aged man—­passed photos around on email, especially with strangers.

“Thank you,” she said. “Mersi.” That was the simple Bulgarian version of thanks; she couldn’t bring herself to attempt the longer, infinitely harder word she’d tried to memorize. The tall man stared at her for a moment, and she thought his face was even sadder. He raised a hand to her and shut his old people quickly into the cab. Then he swung down into the front seat beside the driver. Their conversation had taken only a couple of minutes, but a taxi somewhere along the line had lost patience and was honking. The driver of the little family took off with a rush of tires and moved into the river of traffic, vanishing at once.

Reading Group Guide

1. Consider the opening passage, which begins “This book is a train with many cars, the old kind, moving clumsily along a track at night.” What do you think the author meant by this? How does it affect your reading of the novel? What is the significance of the train car door that is nailed shut from the outside?

2. Why do you think Alexandra goes to such great lengths to return the bag to the Lazarovi? What would you have done in her position?

3. What do you think motivates Bobby to stick with Alexandra from the start? What are some of the main differences and similarities between the two characters?

4. Discuss the theme of guilt in the novel. How do the different characters experience guilt, and what are some of the ways they seek redemption?

5. What does the novel have to say about the importance of history? What are some of the ways we see the past impacting the present over the course of the book?

6. On page 369, Bobby tells Alexandra “In your country, you don’t care about history, and in my country we cannot recover from it.” What do you think he means by this? Do you agree or disagree?

7. Compare and contrast Alexandra at the start of the novel and at the end. What are some of the ways her experience changes her? What do you imagine might happen next for her?

8. Chapter sixty-nine is stylistically very different from the rest of the novel. Why do you think the author chose to tell this part of the story in this way? How did you react to reading that chapter?

9. What is the significance of the story of The Wolf and the Bear? How does it relate to the larger story of this novel, and what do you think the lessons that can be learned from it are?

10. Many of the characters in this novel are artists – musicians, painters, poets – or else have a great love for and appreciation of art. What do you think the significance of this is? What does the novel have to say about the importance of art and creative expression?

1. The Shadow Land begins with the protagonist finding herself in the midst of a startling dilemma. What would be your first instinct if you found yourself in Alexandra’s situation—-in possession of cremated remains belonging to a stranger? How far would you go to -return the ashes?

2. Alexandra and Jack love to pull out the map and dream about the distant lands they hope to one day explore. Likewise dreams of someday traveling to Venice. Is there a place you’ve always wished to visit? Where, and why that place?

3. What do you think happens to Jack? What do you think of the blame Alexandra places on herself for his disappearance? Do you think she makes the right choice in keeping the details of her last conversation with Jack a secret?

4. What do you make of the irony of Alexandra’s inability to find her brother’s remains, and yet her stumbling upon the remains of a stranger? What do you think the author is trying to illustrate through this irony? Are there more instances of irony that unfold throughout the novel?

5. Compare the Bulgarian world of Stoyan’s days to the Bulgarian world Alexandra enters. Although much time has passed, what cultural values and traditions seem to persevere? Why do you think these have stood the test of time? Are there cultural values in your own life that have persisted through generations?

6. The arts seem to hold a special place in this book—-Bobby writes poetry, Irina paints, and Stoyan is a master violinist. Art even becomes a tool of survival for Stoyan and Nasko in the work camp. Why do you think the author places such an emphasis on the importance of fine arts in this novel? What other functions do the fine arts serve for the various characters?

7. Stoyan believes he deserves to pay a penance for causing the murder of Velizar Gishev and his family, and for keeping the truth a secret. Why do you think he later inflicts self—punishment by rebuilding Baba Yana’s house even in his weakened condition? Hasn’t he suffered enough at the hands of the Bulgarian government?

8. Several times, Momo offers Stoyan freedom in exchange for reporting to the Commissioner from Sofia that the prisoners of the work camp are treated well. Each time, Stoyan firmly refuses, and dooms himself to a longer sentence. Do you think he makes the right choice? Do you think Momo would really have released Stoyan if Stoyan had agreed to the deal?

9. Storytelling is an important element in The Shadow Land. Why do you think it is important that we hear the many pieces of Stoyan’s story told from each speaker’s perspective, rather than only from Alexandra’s narration?

10. What do you make of the interconnectedness of Stoyan’s and Alexandra’s lives? What was your reaction when the vision Stoyan creates for himself of his son and a young woman sitting by the river together is played out with Alexandra and Neven?

11. Do you think Vera betrays Stoyan by having a child with another man while Stoyan is in the work camp?

12. Were you surprised to learn that Momo and the Minister of Roads, Mikhail Kurilkov, are the same person? Did you suspect this at any point before it is revealed? If so, how did you know?

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