Dossier

The following article and interview were published in the Italian
newspaper Il Messaggero on May 30, 2003, the day of Boris Akunin’s appearance at the Massenzio Literature Festival in Rome, where he was promoting the Italian edition of Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog.

A veritable phenomenon has emerged from the round belly of the
nesting doll set of Russian literature: He is a writer who goes by the
pen name of Boris Akunin but whose given name is the unpronounceable Grigory Chkhartishvili. Born in 1956, a Georgian transplant in Moscow, Akunin would have settled for his dual career as an editor and literary translator. But when he realized that Russian literature needed an equivalent of [Andrea] Camilleri, that there was a niche for a “literary project that would unite first-rate storytelling with popular narrative,” he took up his pen and began writing mystery novels full of verve and with extremely intelligent plots. All the novels are set in nineteenth-century Russia, and up to now they have all had as their protagonist the eccentric Fandorin, a detective working for the czar who, depending on the circumstance, can become a spy or simply a snoop.

Surrounded by an aura of fame that has for some time traveled
beyond the borders of Russia, Akunin arrives in Rome bearing a copy of his latest thriller, Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, hot off the press. It’s a novel that, surprisingly, sets aside Fandorin in favor of a brand-new protagonist—a heroine who wears a veil, as a matter of fact. Pelagia is a young redheaded nun who reluctantly turns investigator in a string of murders that take place in a country villa, in the fashion of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, which is set in the same time period. As he did in the novels featuring Erast Fandorin, Akunin is still peppering black humor throughout this new mystery. He wins over the reader with his prose, which is refined and entertaining at the same time. Akunin takes the genre of the thriller apart and puts it back together as he pleases. On page after page, the author’s subtle play of references is evocative of authors such as Leskov, Chesterton, Bulgakov, and Umberto Eco. Akunin seems to feel an overwhelming passion for negative characters. Even when the good characters prove to be right,
the doubt still remains: Were the other guys, the bad guys, really
wrong? “Deep down,” says Akunin, “this is precisely the question I
want the reader to ask, because the human soul is laden with unresolved mysteries. The good is the norm, whereas evil is an anomaly, but an interesting anomaly because of its variety. This is why I am attracted to negative characters: They are the most complex and multifaceted.

It’s not by chance that I chose a pseudonym—Akunin—that means
‘wrongdoer’ in Japanese.”

Francesco Fantasia: Excuse me, Mr. Akunin, but after all of the success reaped by Detective Fandorin, why did you decide to switch gears and create the character of Sister Pelagia?

Boris Akunin: Fandorin was tired, and I knew he would become
tired, which is why I had prepared myself to launch a new character,
one who would be completely different from Fandorin. Sister Pelagia is a tribute to Chesterton: a nun blessed with superior intelligence whose only weapons are knitting needles. But you might ask, why a nun, precisely? I admit that love and sex scenes are not my strong point. With a female detective who wears a nun’s habit, I am off the hook.

FF: Fandorin and Sister Pelagia carry out their investigations in a
nineteenth-century Russia whose resemblance to contemporary Russia is striking: a rising middle class, disparities among social classes, greedy upstarts, and politicians with a questionable past. . . .

BA: The problems that Russia faced at the end of the nineteenth
century are essentially the same problems we have in Russia today.
I don’t want to go on at great length about the political and economic aspects of these problems. That’s not really the point. Right now there is an ongoing debate in my country about which values deserve the highest priority: whether individual values need to be emphasized, or whether we should return to social and collective interests. Last century, Russia chose an answer to this question that led to the tragedies of the twentieth century. Now we find ourselves at a similar crossroads, but we don’t know yet which road will be taken this time.

FF: Your novels are replete with references to contemporary Russian politics. To what extent is it appropriate to refer to your mysteries as “political”?

BA: My thrillers are written for entertainment, but each of them can
be considered in some measure a political novel, because politics is
everywhere in Russia. If you don’t deal with politics, politics will deal with you.

FF: One of your mysteries, The Death of Achilles, is set against the
background of Russia’s cruel colonization of Chechnya in the nineteenth century. What would Detective Fandorin say today about
Putin’s policy regarding the republic of Chechnya?

BA: I don’t believe that Fandorin would have taken part in Putin’s
military campaign against Chechnya. Yes, Fandorin is a detective in
the czar’s police force, but he is above all a man of solid moral principles. The war against Chechnya is taking place in an atmosphere of immorality.

FF: Some critics in your country have accused you of conservatism.
How do you respond to this?

BA: People can think and write whatever they please. In any case, if
nineteenth-century Russia is dear to me, it is for its literary, not its political, history.

FF: During perestroika, under Gorbachev, a whole new generation of Russian writers landed in the West. But now, internationally known Russian writers can be counted on one hand. How do you explain this?

BA: It’s simple: Russia is out of fashion. In the time of perestroika, all eyes were on the USSR. And even in the field of literature, everything that came out of Moscow was well received. But now Russia is like an old-fashioned, outdated suit. It doesn’t interest people, especially on the literary front.