As with all classics, when we read them says a lot about how we read them. In his introduction, Alexander Chee considers what it means to read Dracula now, and invites the reader to ask themselves, “Why has this vampire stayed in our minds, even after all of the horrors of the twentieth century, much less the twenty-first?” Silvia Moreno-Garcia looks at the history of vampires and how they evolved from zombie-like vectors of contagion to seductive villains. Dracula, she writes, “positions disease in a new light.” Illustrations by Kaitlin Chan invite the reader to see Dracula and his environs through a new, ever darker lens.

Since its original publication in 1897, Dracula has spoken aloud some of our deepest cultural anxieties: fear of sexuality, xenophobia, homophobia, and distrust of The Other. One of the most culturally recognizable and pervasive characters ever written, Stoker’s Count Dracula is immensely more terrifying than the familiar caped and fanged representation we have come to know. The Count’s terror lies not solely in his deadly bloodlust, but also in his harrowing ability to hide his malfeasance behind power and privilege.

When Jonathan Harker unearths Count Dracula’s (un)deadly secret, he unwittingly starts a war between good and evil with disastrous repercussions. The innocent Lucy Westenra falls prey to his curse, Mina Harker narrowly escapes a vicious transformation, and the indefatigable Abraham Van Helsing risks life and afterlife to defeat his archnemesis. A masterpiece of gothic horror, Dracula is a resonant, terrifying contemplation of the unknown, and a cautionary reminder that evil doesn’t always announce itself with fangs and coffins; it lurks within the normal and the mundane, just waiting to be uncovered.

Bram Stoker was an Irish author of nearly twenty novels, best known for his gothic horror novel Dracula. Educated at Trinity College in Dublin, he joined the Civil Service before becoming the personal assistant of Henry Irving and manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London.

Kaitlin Chan (she/her) is a cartoonist and zine-maker from Hong Kong. She is currently working on her debut graphic novel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker online, The Margins, Popula, Bat City Review, the Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook, and others. As an illustrator, some of her collaborators include Airbnb, Sotheby’s, Vans, Asia Art Archive in America, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and Glasgow Zine Festival. She was the recipient of a 2019–2020 Mortimer Brandeis-Hays Traveling Fellowship. She is a co-founder of Queer Reads Library, a mobile book and zine collection championing queer voices from the Asian diaspora, Asia, and beyond.