Boris Akunin
Biography
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He is an essayist, literary translator and writer of detective fiction. After developing an interest in Japanese Kabuki theater, he joined the historical philological branch of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University as an expert on Japan.
Under his pseudonym Akunin, he has written many works of fiction, mainly novels and stories in the different series: The Adventures of Erast Fandorin; The Adventures of Sister Pelagia; The Adventures of the Master (following Nicholas Fandorin, Erast’s grandson); Roman-Kino (Novel-Film) series set during World War I; and Genres (where each novel represents a different genre of fiction). He is also the author of several theatre plays, among them detective remakes of Hamlet and Chekhov’s Seagull.
Three Fandorin novels, The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit and The State Counsellor and the first of Pelagia novels as well as one book of the Genres series (The Spy Thriller) were made into big-budget Russian movies.
Akunin has been called the 'undisputed champion' of Russian crime fiction and has been translated into 35 languages and have sold a total of 25 million copies.
Books /selected/
Весь мир театр / All the world’s a stage (2009)
Квест / Quest (2009)
Сокол и Ласточка / The Falcon and the Swallow (2009)
Странный человек / The Wandering Man (2009)
In Translation /selected/
in English
The Coronation (2010)
Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk (2008)
The Death of Achilles (2006)
The Turkish Gambit (2005)
Prizes and awards /selected/
2009 - Japanese Fund Award
2003 - Shortlisted for The Dagger Award
2000 - Russian Writer of the Year
2000 - The Antibooker Prize