In this contemporary retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Estonian writer Mati Unt offers a playful yet unsettling mixture of fact and fiction, combining pieces of Estonian political history-in particular the figure of Lydia Koidula (1843-1886), widely regarded as the first Estonian woman to express an Estonian longing for independence-with portraits of life in contemporary Estonia, all set against a backdrop of vampirism and the Gothic novel.
In 1990, the same year as Things in the Night, Unt published a second novel, Diary of a Blood Donor, which displays the usual Untian mixture of fact and fiction, and takes one of the most sacred names in Estonian literature in vain. Lydia Koidula (1843-1886) is widely regarded as the first Estonian woman poet of significance, and also as the first poet to express an Estonian longing for independence. Here, Unt rather blasphemously weaves this national icon and her Latvian doctor husband into a postmodern tale of vampires and a mysterious trip to Leningrad.
