Blue-Blooded Dracula Fantasy with an Idyllic Coda — Dana Grigorcea's third Novel, “Die Nicht sterben”. Translation into English

Abstract

All three hitherto published novels by Dana Grigorcea do explicitly refer to Romania. Had her first novel been set in the Danube Delta and her second in Bucharest, so the plot of the recently released novel Die nicht sterben is located in the touristic town B. (= Buşteni) at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. Based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula as literary pre-text, the plot of Die nicht sterben interweaves elements of Romanian history, Romanian contemporary events as well as elements of the family history of the first-person narrator. The present paper is focused especially on the female narrator’s bodily, erotic and flying fantasies. The social and moral revolt which manifests itself first and foremost in the vampiresses’ urge to impale, subsides in the end in uncritical idyllic and narcissistic self-reflection.