Powers of Darkness: the Icelandic Dracula (2017)
A 1901 Icelandic “translation” of Dracula that turned out to be a different novel.
Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland under Stoker’s name in 1901 and went largely unnoticed outside the country until the 1980s. It is an alternate version of the story, now in English.
You have read Dracula and you want the version published in Iceland in 1901 under Stoker’s name, which tells the story differently.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the Count, Harker and the castle, under Stoker’s name.
Changes: a great deal of the plot. Hans de Roos’s translation annotates where the Icelandic text departs from the novel you know.
Whose story is it?
an alternate one, credited to Stoker and to Valdimar Ásmundsson.
How much time does it ask?
320 pages in hardcover.
Overlook / Abrams hardcover, 7 February 2017, 320 pages; translated and annotated by Hans de Roos, foreword by Dacre Stoker, afterword by John Edgar Browning.
Where to find it
Buy the hardcover — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Hardcover — Amazon · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
Common questions
Is Powers of Darkness the same as Dracula?
No. Makt Myrkranna, the Icelandic text published in 1901 under Stoker’s name, is an alternate version of the story. Hans de Roos’s 2017 English translation annotates the differences. The Swedish newspaper serial it was drawn from, much longer, was translated into English in 2022.
More Draculas: The Norton Critical Edition, second edition · The Oxford World’s Classics edition (2011) · The Penguin Classics edition (2003)