Vlad
Novel , 2010
Alfaguara
Pages: 112
There is a vampire in Mexico City. He needs your blood. He wants your life. He’s after those who you love. And he will take much more than that.
Isn’t Mexico City, with its population of 10 million people, and a police force that isn’t perturbed by a few missing persons, the ideal home for a modern-day vampire?
In the last novel he wrote before he died, Carlos Fuentes revisits the character whose mythic cruelty inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
An old European aristocrat, Count Vlad Radu, settles down in Mexico City with his daughter in a mansion that seems more like a monastery. After coping with centuries of war and lack of human blood in Europe, he decides to move to the other side of the Atlantic and reestablish his empire. Although, he will need to hire the services of Yves Navarro, a lawyer, and his wife Asuncion, a detective from a well-off family who bears a mysterious resemblance to a woman in an old photograph…
“If you like vampires and your blood boils when you see what these horrific creatures have been reduced to nowadays, this short novel will restore your faith in the genre.” Soho
“Vlad is a short novel which you begin reading at 9 in the evening, you finish by 10 but are still blown away by at 8 in the morning.” Javier Velasco
“Breaking the cliché of the good, handsome, romantic vampire, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes gives life to Vlad, a cruel, brutal, old-style vampire with the darkest of intentions in Mexico City.” El Economista
"A master piece of Spanish fantasy literature and one of the most disturbing vampire novels I have ever read." Guillermo del Toro