Dracula Park

Winner of the Swiss Book Prize, Nominated for the German Book Prize.Dracula Park by Dana Grigorcea provides a perfect dose of supernatural and intrigue for fans of Horror and Gothic Fiction.After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, a young artist returns from Paris to the rural town of B., south of Transylvania, Romania. Despite its kitschy charm and quiet idyll, an undeniable shadow cloaks the town: the people around her are changing and a sinister aura looms behind B.’s sleepy demeanor.When a mutilated corpse is discovered in the family crypt of Prince Vlad the Impaler, infamously known as Dracula, this previously inexplicable tension and uncanny reaches its peak. With plans from the corrupt mayor to turn the crypt into a vampire-themed amusement park, B. is set for ruin, the haven it once was becoming lost in the desperate clutching of the past. Dana Grigorcea weaves themes of the supernatural, magical realism and Romanian folklore into this prize-winning, captivating tale of revenge, extremism and politics. Described by Frankfurter Rundschau as a ‘dreamy and rock-hard horror story’, Dracula Park's experimentalism with the realm of time, reality and fantasy encapsulates the social changes in a post-communist Romania.