The Vampire

The plot of Tolstoy’s book is convoluted, but unlike modern fictional works about vampires, in “The Upyr” there are no logical or plot inconsistencies. With several unexpected turns, the narrative comes to a finish so logically that the ending of the book looks completely natural. In his “The Upyr,” Tolstoy does give a nod to some of the prevailing superstitions of that time about upyrs, yet overall, objectively and with ethnographic accuracy, he describes these dangerous creatures. In particular, it was perhaps among the first in upyr-lore that not merely a guess was voiced, but a conviction: that the European vampire is a descendant of East Slavic lands, and that a vampire and an upyr are essentially the same thing.