A chat with Elizabeth Kostova

When I found out that I had the opportunity to meet and interview Elizabeth Kostova while I was at SIBA, I was extremely excited, but also somewhat nervous.  I mean, this is the woman who wrote The Historian, the fastest-selling hardback debut novel and the first debut novel to make it to number one on The New York Times bestseller list.  What could I possibly have to say to an author like that?  (I immediately asked for assistance, and Candace helped me come up with some great questions.)  When I met Elizabeth and her mother, I discovered that I worried for nothing – they are gracious and warm and put me at ease immediately.  By the way, I was thrilled to meet Elizabeth’s mother since her new book is dedicated to her.

Elizabeth is the oldest of three girls, and each of them are accomplished in their own rights.  One has even written an academic book, Backstage at the Revolution.  When Elizabeth was seven years old, her family lived in Slovenia for five months and it had a great impact on her life.  She thinks seven was the perfect age for her to be exposed to so much history.  Elizabeth was raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, went to Yale for her undergraduate degree and earned her MFA at the University of Michigan.

Elizabeth has a interest in Balkan folk music and even participated in a Slavic chorus in college.  She and some friends studied local musical customs in Bulgaria and Bosnia and some of their recordings from that time can be found in the Library of Congress.  (She is no longer involved in Balkan music.)  Since she’s traveled so much, I asked Elizabeth how many languages she speaks and she told me that she speaks English and some Bulgarian (her husband is Bulgarian).  She took eight years of French and has also had the opportunity to study Slovenian and Croatian.

As a graduate student, Elizabeth was allowed to take one class outside of her major.  She took a  history course, and while she didn’t get the knack of research in that class, the exposure to research techniques helped her a lot.  Later, that same history professor gave her a tutorial on research, and interviewing him helped Elizabeth learn how historians live and how their minds work.  As part of her research process, Elizabeth travels, listens to music, cooks dishes that her characters might eat, reads books and interviews, watches films and uses the internet.  When using the internet, she tries to find three sources that agree.  (For The Swan Thieves, she also looked at many paintings and museums.)

It took Elizabeth ten years to write The Historian and the book was written in the order that you read it.  To keep up with the story lines, Elizabeth kept a huge flow chart above her desk.  She decided not to name the main character as an experiment, which obviously worked. Sony Pictures is producing a movie version of The Historian.  Elizabeth is a consultant on the film, but she is not writing the screenplay.  They’ve been writing the screenplay for three years and can’t hire a director and the actors until it is complete.

I asked Elizabeth if she felt a lot of pressure as she was writing The Swan Thieves since The Historian was so successful.  She replied that she didn’t until she was on the book tour for The Historian and people kept asking her that question.  I’ve heard that The Swan Thieves is even better than The Historian.

In writing The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth used a totally different process than she did for The Historian.  The book was not written in the order that you read it.  Elizabeth wrote the compelling parts as they came to her and later re-organized the whole work.  It took five years to complete the book and half of that time was for the re-organization process.  The Swan Thieves is about art and art history.  It crosses legal and ethical boundaries and there are five love stories in the book.  The main character of The Swan Thieves does have a name – Andrew Marlow – and he is a psychiatrist in Washington, D. C. with the case of a lifetime.

Elizabeth loves to read novels, history, biographies, poetry and essays.  She told me that she feels like we’re in the midst of a renaissance of novelists and she does enjoy reading their work, but her favorites are the 19th century masters and early modernist, like Henry James, George Elliot, Charles Dickens, Thomas Harding, and Leo Tolstoy, just to name a few.  She recently read and loved The Long Afternoon by Giles Waterfield.  Elizabeth said she doesn’t write just before bed, but uses that time to read instead.

In 2007, Elizabeth has established The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation – the goal of which is to assist, support and encourage Bulgarian authors and foster friendships between Bulgarian writers and English and American writers.  The Foundation holds an International Fiction Seminar in Bulgaria and presents a Translation Award for work translated from Bulgarian to English.

It was such a delight to get to chat with Elizabeth and her mother and I was thrilled to learn that Elizabeth believes that bloggers are an important part of today’s literary world.  Her latest book, The Swan Thieves, will be released on January 12, 2010.