The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia’s Bestselling Author ed. by Elena V. Baraban and Stephen M. Norris

Reviewed by: The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia’s Bestselling Author ed. by Elena V. Baraban and Stephen M. Norris David Gillespie Baraban, Elena V. and Norris, Stephen M. (eds). The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia’s Bestselling Author. Toronto University Press, Toronto, ON and Buffalo, NY, 2021. x + 361 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. List of works by Boris Akunin. Index. $95.00; $45.95. Boris Akunin/Grigorii Chkhartishvili is a phenomenon in the modern Russian cultural sphere as a commercially successful author and blogger who has embraced technology for marketing and self-promotion, to great popular and critical acclaim. He successfully crosses genres from creative fiction, such as historical detective stories, to academic examination, as in his History of the Russian State, ‘cinema novels’ and serials, in a fusion which continues to fascinate and confound readers in equal measure. Much confusion also surrounds the writer’s several aliases, with Akunin the predominant fictional face of the actual Grigorii Chkhartishvili, with Anatolii Brusnikin and Anna Borisova other literary manifestations. Akunin/Chkhartishvili/Brusnikin/Borisova is the author of over sixty books, most of them penned by Akunin. Much of his fiction has been translated into English, and he is probably now the best-known contemporary Russian author in the English-speaking world. This is the first full-scale English-language study of his work and significance in Russia today. The book is divided into various discrete parts, examining different aspects of the writer’s interests (the Fandorin stories, the Sister Pelageia trilogy, the exploration of history, Akunin as a ‘commercial’ commodity). Reflecting the duality of the writer’s persona and his writings, [End Page 367] the book begins with an interview with Grigorii Chkhartishvili and concludes with ten questions directed at Boris Akunin. In addition to these interviews and the ‘Introduction’, there are twelve studies embracing the impressive scope of Akunin/Chkhartishvili, with four appendices containing extracts from Akunin’s untranslated works. In sum, ‘impressive’ is also the word used to categorize the ‘project’ and its realization. The overall impression from this collection of essays is the depth and sophistication of Chkhartishvili/Akunin’s cross-genre narratives and his postmodern integration of history, culture and politics, usually with a postmodern wink at the reader. The playfulness can also be seen in the choice of pseudonyms: A. O. Brusnikin is an anagram of ‘Boris Akunin’, ‘akunin’ is a Japanese word meaning ‘villain’ (Chkhartishvili is fluent in Japanese), and ‘Bakunin’ is, of course, the name of one of Russia’s most famous nineteenth-century radical thinkers. The book’s structure and contents are a little skewed, with four of the twelve chapters, as well as the Introduction, authored by the two editors, and there is no discussion of another of Chkhartishvili’s literary manifestations Anna Borisova, though the editors acknowledge this lack. The quality of the writing is uniformly high, with a balance struck between compelling analyses of the Akunin ‘phenomenon’ in general as ‘filling the niche in the Russian book market for high-level popular literature while achieving commercial success’ (Nattalia Erlenkamp, p. 295) and penetrating studies of individual works (in the opinion of this reviewer, pride of place goes to Zora M. Torlone’s examination of Akunin’s ‘revision’ of Dostoevskii’s Crime and Punishment). Whereas most of the authors give positive and thought-provoking assessments of Chkhartishvili/Akunin, a dissonant note is provided by Ilya Gerasimov’s disparaging view of Akunin as ‘a lousy historian’ (p. 189), though given the self-conscious subversion of narrative and authority to which we have been treated in the other essays, that may be the whole point. David Gillespie Moscow City University Copyright © 2022 David Gillespie

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