[3] Kostova's interest in the Dracula legend began with the stories her father told her about the vampire when she was a child.

[1] In 1989, she and some friends traveled to Eastern Europe, specifically Bulgaria and Bosnia, to study local musical customs.

[8] At the time she was teaching English as a second language, creative writing, and composition classes at universities in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[10] The rights to the book were then auctioned off and Little, Brown and Company bought it for US$2 million (US$30,000 is typical for a first novel from an unknown author[11]).

Publishers Weekly explained the high price as a bidding war between firms believing that they might have the next Da Vinci Code within their grasp.

One vice-president and associate publisher said "Given the success of The Da Vinci Code, everybody around town knows how popular the combination of thriller and history can be and what a phenomenon it can become.

The novel blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula and has been described as a combination of genres, including Gothic novel, adventure novel, detective fiction, travelogue, postmodern historical novel, epistolary epic, and historical thriller.

[5][14] The novel is concerned with questions about history, its role in society, and how it is represented in books, as well as the nature of good and evil.

"[10][15] The evils brought about by religious conflict are a particular theme and the novel explores the relationship between the Christian West and the Islamic East.