Akunin’s Black City

If Boris Akunin’s Чёрный город (The Black City) were to carry a descriptive tag, like the first nine of Akunin’s books featuring Erast Petrovich Fandorin—there’s a “political” detective novel and a “Dickensian” detective novel—The Black City might be labeled “a detective novel rooted in Greek tragedy.” The Black City begins with a line from Homer’s Odyssey, a line that sounds like this in E.V. Rieu’s prose translation of The Odyssey: “Meanwhile Odysseus turned his back on the harbour and followed a rough track leading up into the woods and through the hills towards the spot where Athene had told him…”

A bit of backstory: the beginning of Akunin’s novel was first published in Le Figaro, which in 2008 solicited a series of stories celebrating Homer. Apparently all the pieces Le Figaro published in the series begin with that line, which also happens to begin the fourteenth book of The Odyssey. Caveat: since I haven’t read The Odyssey (ouch!), I’m not sure what other elements Akunin may have borrowed. I can say that Akunin’s Odysseus is, initially, in Yalta in 1914. So is Fandorin, on a Chekhov-related mission. Odysseus commits murder and absconds to Baku meaning, of course, that Fandorin goes to Azerbaijan, too, both to hunt down Odysseus and to deliver trunk of clothes to his wife, the actress known as Klara Lunnaya, who’s making a film in Baku. Phew.

Well. Well. I’ve long had a sentimental soft spot for Akunin’s Fandorin novels because it was the unexpected gift of a Fandorin Book, Любовница смерти (known as She Lover of Death in Andrew Bromfield’s translation), that got me reading contemporary Russian fiction a decade or so ago. But, as I’ve noted before, my interest in Akunin’s Fandorin series dropped off rather sharply after He Lover of Death—the ninth book in the Fandorin franchise: I wasn’t even able to finish all four that came after that—and more than one Russian reader has suggested to me that Akunin исписалcя, wrote himself out, after He Lover of Death.

Pipeline, Black City, 1905

The Black City feels like it could have used a fair bit of editorial tightening and freshening—the plot twists feel pretty worn after turning many, many times—but it still feels more inspired to me than The Diamond Chariot, The Jade Rosary, or All the World’s a Stage. I’m sure my personal interest in Baku plays a big part here: I visited several times during the 1990s. I also think Akunin’s use of his geographical setting—a Baku swimming in oil plus all the crime, wealth, labor issues, and international figures that come with oil—and temporal setting, when revolutionaries are acting up and a certain archduke is murdered in Sarajevo, gives him lots of ways to work in bits of history and namedrop Diesel, the Nobels, and Koba, all while serving up a pretty standard combination of family drama, revolutionary and business activity, as well as, of course, crime. I admit to skimming through more than one section (the motorboat chase scene, for example, was simply too long) but did finish the book, though that was, alas, more out of inertia, old times’ sake, and interest in Baku than fascination with the plot or characters.

Will the loony Klara and Fandorin (who clearly disdains her and recognizes her use of her stage characters’ speeches in real life) stay together despite her cinematic suitor? Will Fandorin and his local sidekick Gasym, who mangles Russian grammar, catch the bad guys? Will the merry petroleum widow whose eunuch servant serves as a fixer (and voyeur, too: I think this bit player is one of the book’s most interesting characters) for her assignations set her eye on Erast Petrovich and lure him to her home? And, since someone somewhere referred to The Black City as containing alternative history: will the world erupt in war after the events in Sarajevo? I’ll never tell. All in all, I think I got more enjoyment from surfing for background on turn-of-the-last-century Baku and looking at old online photographs than reading The Black City, which lacks pep and pop, and feels all too much like a franchise novel.

Up Next: Eugene Vodolazkin’s Aviator and Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, both of which I’m enjoying, in very different ways. The Big Book longlist is coming soon, too. Also: translations due out in 2016. Translators and publishers, please let me know what you have scheduled for release this year!

Photograph by Carl Bulla (who sounds like a pretty interesting character himself!), via Wikipedia.

Guest Post by Olga Bukhina: Having It Both Ways

I was very happy when translator and writer Olga Bukhina sent me a note last month asking if I’d like her to write another guest post about Russian literature for children. I was happy to say Yes: some of you told me you enjoyed her previous guest post, plus I’d been so busy teaching and working on preparations for Read Russia that I was getting behind in my own reading and writing. Of course, Olga’s topic sounded great, too—writers who write for adults and kids—and two of the writers she mentions in her post were in New York last week for BookExpo America and Read Russia events. I’m grateful to Olga for writing this post (even more so because I came home exhausted and with a bad cold)… and for being such a good friend and colleague last week in New York!

Many contemporary writers who write primarily for adults have tried their hands at writing for children, or perhaps it’s better to say that they’ve experimented with writing books that can be read both by adults and by kids. As Dmitry Bykov eloquently put it in the subtitle to one of his books, “A Children’s Book for Adults, or An Adults’ Book for Children.”

Lyudmila Ulitskaya has published a lot of short stories about children, such as her series Девочки (Girls), but her Истории про зверей и людей (Stories of Animals and People) are for kids. The book starts with three tales with very long descriptive names. История про воробья Антверпена, кота Михеева, столетника Васю и сороконожку Марью Семеновну с семьей (A Story of Antwerp the Sparrow, Mikheev the Cat, Vasya the Aloe Plant, and Maria Semenovna the Centipede and Her Family) is about three creatures who first get together out of loneliness. They stay together for the sake of helping a muddle-headed mother centipede to raise her enormous family. These little tales are funny and to the point, and have just exactly the right proportion of light humor and moral message. Yes, it is good to love everyone, including “those who do not look like you, for example, sparrows, cats, and aloe plants.” The tales are followed by a collection of very short stories, Детство-49 (Childhood-49), published before as a separate book. These are more realistic vignettes of post-World War II Soviet childhood, and the reader clearly sees the events through the child-protagonist’s eyes and senses the child’s biggest fear or strongest desire.

Bykov’s О зверьках и зверушах (About Critters and Creatures), whose subtitle I already mentioned above, is sometimes published as a part of a larger book В мире животиков (In the World of Animalitos). He co-authored these tales with his wife Irina Luk’ianova. They are tiny stories about various animal-like creatures who live in different towns, Гордый (Proud-Town) and Преображенск (Transfiguration-City). They are female and male, and behave just like people in spite of their tassel tails. Some of them are very good, others are very bad, and still others are somewhere in between. There is a lot of contemporary politics, eternal religious debate, Christian allusions, parodies of Russian intelligentsia, and gender role discussions in these tales. Some of them are truly for children, others are more for adults, but all of them are written in a fairytalish form with a light touch. Сказка о необитаемом острове (A Tale of the Desert Island) about the adventures of two young ones, Il’ka and Fedya, is, to my taste, the most touching story in the collection.

Boris Minaev is a different case: he is someone who started as a children’s writer and moved into adult literature later on. His Детство Левы (Leva’s Childhood) is a quite realistic story of Soviet Jewish childhood in the early 1970s. It is almost a memoir with details which are very familiar to anyone who lived through these times: the yard outside of the apartment building, soccer and other games, the Victory Day celebration, the fear of darkness, a hole in the asphalt which turned out to be a cave without a treasure, a children’s movie for 10 kopeks in the local movie theater, and a first cheap cigarette.

Another time-traveling experience is Boris Akunin’s Детская книга (Children’s Book). It is a part of his famous Fandorin series, but this time the main character is not an Erast Fandorin, an aristocrat and an adventurist, and not his grandson, a Moscow detective, but his great grandson and namesake who lives in contemporary Moscow and travels to 1914, to the time of Boris Godunov in the 17^th century, and to the future with the help of “chronoholes.” It is a combination of adventure novel and historical fiction, and a page turner.

The postmodern tales of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Lyudmila Petrushevskaya) are really in their own category. The longer I read them, the more I am convinced that they are not in the realm of children’s literature. Their dark and absurdist humor targets a much more mature audience, even though the series about Barbie dolls from the collection Настоящие сказки (The Real Tales) looks like children’s stories, and many other stories refer to classical fairy-tales. A similar literary device was used by Alexander Kabakov in his Московские сказки (The Moscow Tales), where he applies well-known fairy-tales and legends, like the Tower of Babel, to contemporary situations.

For more: Olga Bukhina often writes Russian-language posts for a blog maintained by the Working Group for Study of Russian Children’s Literature and Culture. The blog also contains pieces written in English.

Up next: A few notes on BookExpo America and Read Russia, then a post about an actual book I’ve read. Maybe Zakhar Prilepin’s The Black Monkey... I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to getting back to writing about my books!

Disclaimers: The usual.

Two Theater Novels: Bulgakov & Akunin

Reading, Act I: Mikhail Bulgakov’s short, unfinished novel Театральный роман: Записки покойника (known in English by such titles as A Dead Man’s Memoir: A Theatrical Novel and Black Snow: A Theatrical Novel)

Reading, Act II: Boris Akunin’s too-long but too-tidy novel Весь мир театр (literally All the World’s a Theater or All the World’s a Stage)

My reaction: Polite, restrained applause, an indifferent shrug, and a quick exit.

I enjoy a good theater production from time to time but I realized after these two books that I’m not wild enough about the stage – despite having helped present Russian theater here in Portland, Maine, back in the early ‘90s – to read fiction about it. It doesn’t help that I don’t think either of these books is its author’s best… I knew the Bulgakov might be an unsatisfying unfinished novel. (Check!) And I suspected the Akunin might be an unsatisfying potboiler. (Check!) So.

A Theatrical Novel fictionalizes Bulgakov’s experiences working with the Moscow Art Theater (МХАТ) but I’ll focus on summarizing my impressions of the novel rather than decoding “кто есть who” (who’s who). Wikipedia has a full Russian-language plot summary and list of prototypes for characters here. (Google Translate transliterates the list of characters and renders the entry’s narrative into something moderately readable.)

For me, the best fun of A Theatrical Novel was reading about the reactions of the narrator, an unknown writer who admits he’s written a lousy novel, to a director’s demands for revisions to the stage adaptation of the novel: a dagger, for example, must replace a gun. I also thoroughly enjoyed the humor, dialogue, outlandish names (e.g. Poliksena Toropetskaya), and, yes, theatrical behavior in many of the set pieces. Despite the combination of some good laughs and Bulgakov’s scathing portrayal of censorship and theater figures, though, A Theatrical Novel felt uneven and unfinished enough that it left me indifferent. I suspect theater buffs will appreciate its characterizations and situations more than I did.

Alas, Akunin’s book was even more disappointing, despite my low expectations: I think only the first nine Fandorin detective novels are readable. All the World’s a Theater finds Erast Petrovich Fandorin in his fifties in 1911; Petr Stolypin has just been shot in, yes, a theater. Fandorin is soon to go gaga over an actress, Eliza, whom he meets through Olga Knipper. Knipper thinks Eliza, who is much younger than Fandorin, needs Fandorin’s help. Fandorin, ever the Renaissance man, obliges, turning dramaturge to write a play with parts for Eliza and himself and then, of course, investigating when corpses start appearing.

What’s most unfortunate about All the World’s a Theater is that it lacks the verve and narrative drive of the initial Fandorin books: the book feels weighted down with Fandorin’s romantic thoughts and Akunin’s clichéd attempts at contrasting and overlapping art/theater with life/reality. (Like Bulgakov, Akunin has also had dealings with adaptations.) The “Бедная Лиза” (“Poor Liza”) connection of the very first Fandorin novel is made yawningly obvious this time, and Fandorin’s play is included in the book. I’ll confess: I skipped it. I plodded through the pages as I plodded through the miles on the treadmill but the book didn’t made the walk feel much shorter. I guess I hadn’t missed Fandorin that much.

Level for non-native readers of Russian: A Theatrical Novel might have been a bit more difficult than All The World's a Theater, for 2.5/5 and 2.0/5 respectively.

Next up: Мультики (Toons), Mikhail Elizarov’s rather odd follow-up to the Booker-winning Библиотекарь (The Librarian) (previous post)… I think my reading slump is ending, though: I’m loving Oleg Zaionchkovskii’s Счастье возможно: роман нашего времени (Happiness Is Possible: A Novel of Our Time).

Photo: weatherbox, via sxc.hu

Various versions of A Theatrical Novel on Amazon

Boris Akunin on Amazon

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More Mid-March Miscellany: 1 Nomination, 2 Adaptations, 1 Review, 1 Passing & 4 Reading Ideas

Sometimes I go for weeks without seeing any news related to Russian literature, but then there are weeks like this one…

1 Nomination. The most exciting news of the day was learning that Andrew Bromfield’s translation of Boris Akunin’s Коронация (The Coronation), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, is on the long list for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Coronation, a “high-society detective novel,” is one of my Fandorin favorites.

2 Adaptations. Dostoevsky made the front page of today’s New York Times, in the article “A 12-Hour Play, and Endless Bragging Rights,” about Peter Stein’s lengthy production of The Demons scheduled for the Lincoln Center Festival in July. At $175, including meals, it’s a good value, but I agree with some of the commenters who think 12 hours sounds, uhm, rather long. My husband thinks it sounds like a hazing ritual… In film news, Kommersant.ru reports here that Karen Shakhnazarov’s film version of Anton Chekhov’s Палата No. 6 (Ward No. 6) won the Manoel de Oliveira award at the Fantasporto film festival in Porto, Portugal. The film is set in the present but evidently preserves Chekhov’s plot. Mosfilm has a site here with information, including an English-language trailer.

1 Review. In contemporary fiction news, Gregory Freidin’s article-review of Aleksandr Terekhov’s Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge) is on TimesOnline here. Chances are good I won’t be writing about The Stone Bridge any year soon: I stopped reading on page 364 of 829. Freiden reveals aspects of the ending that confirm that I truly did quit reading while I was ahead. From what I can gather, readers either love or hate The Stone Bridge. Two friends loved it but I dreaded reading it. That’s always a bad sign. I can handle loathsome narrators (one reader I know mentioned misogynism), but the combination of loathsome and (okay, I’ll just say it!) boring was too much.

1 Passing. Lenta.ru reported (here) that Russian poet Elena Shvarts died yesterday. A Russian-English book of Shvarts’s poetry, Birdsong on the Seabed, translated by Sasha Dugdale, was a finalist for the 2009 Rossica Prize. Wikipedia lists Shvarts’s translated works.

4 Recommendations. Finally, Elif Batuman, author of that other book called The Possessed (previous post), wrote a piece for The Daily Beast (here) recommending four modern classics of Russian literature. They are: Viktor Shklovskii’s ZOO, или Письма не о любви (ZOO, or Letters Not about Love), Andrei Platonov’s Джан (translated by Robert Chander and Olga Meerson as Soul), poet Osip Mandel’shtam’s memoir Шум времени (The Noise of Time), and Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms.

Oddly, two of these books – ZOO and Soul – have come up recently in dinner conversations with friends. Did I read ZOO years ago? I don’t remember for sure, though I know I read some of Shklovsky’s literary theory as well as his Сентиментальное путешествие (Sentimental Journey) for courses. And Soul, which a friend liked very much, came up right after I posted (here) a link to an interview in which Robert Chandler discusses Platonov. Unfortunately, Chandler’s introduction to Soul (PDF here) indicates that I don’t have the full text of the Russian original of Soul. Even so, I’m thinking I may read it before delving into Чевенгур (Chevengur), which is over 400 pages long.

The Coronation on Amazon

Dostoevsky's Demons, Devils & Possessed on Amazon

Batuman's The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them on Amazon

Shklovsky's Zoo, or Letters Not About Love on Amazon

Shvarts's Birdsong on the Seabed on Amazon

Platonov's Soul: And Other Stories on Amazon

Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms

Notable New Translations: What 2009 Brought

It’s the season for year-end lists so I thought I’d take a look at translations that brought Russian fiction into English translation for the first time in 2009. I always enjoy acknowledging translators and their publishers, and the list is so varied it should provide some fun ideas for personal reading or holiday gifts. I began by looking at the translation database from Three Percent (available here, updated here on 2 December), then added a few items that weren’t on that list…

Those of you who visit this blog regularly can probably divine that I think 2009’s most exciting releases are anthologies of contemporary Russian short stories: Rasskazy, from Tin House, and Life Stories from Russian Information Services. (All posts: Rasskazy Life Stories) Both books are treats because their varied voices, literary devices, and topics form a tremendous mosaic. I’ll be writing a full post about Rasskazy within the next week or so and hope to get to Life Stories in December.

Several more of Boris Akunin’s novels (previous post) made it into English this year, thanks to translator Andrew Bromfield: Pelagia and the Red Cockerel (Random House), plus two of Akunin’s Erast Fandorin books, Coronation and She Lover of Death (imports in the US; Weidenfeld & Nicholson). I love Akunin’s Fandorin novels, and She Lover of Death is a sentimental favorite because it was the first book I read when I got back into reading Russian fiction about five years ago. Bromfield is prolific: his translation of Andrei Rubanov’s Do Time Get Time, from Old Street Publishing, came out in May, too.

Last weekend’s post about Anna Starobinets (here) mentioned her story collection An Awkward Age, translated by Hugh Aplin and published by Hesperus Press, as well as Liudmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, translated by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers, and published by Penguin. (Edit: Jessa Crispin's "A World of Novels: Picks for Best Foreign Fiction," on NPR.org, includes Petrushevskaya's book and links to the title story, which actually carries the modest title "Revenge.")

Northwestern University Press brought out two new Russian titles in 2009: Gaito Gazdanov’s Night Roads, translated by Justin Doherty, and Ivan Shcheglov’s novella The Dacha Husband, translated by Michael Katz. I’m familiar with Gazdanov – I just finished his atmospheric Призрак Александра Вольфа (The Ghost of Alexander Wolf) – but Shcheglov is a new name for me. Another writer I haven’t read is Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, whom Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov translated for the (partially) new collection from New York Review Books, Memories of the Future. (previous post)

Amanda Love Darragh, who won this year’s Rossica Prize for translating Maria Galina’s Iramifications, translated A Jewish God in Paris, a trio of novellas by Mikhail Levitin; Glas published both books. Polly Gannon’s translation of Max Frei’s The Stranger (Overlook) brings the first book of the popular, magical-sounding science fiction series Labyrinths of Echo into English. I’ve never read Frei but have the second book in the series – I just never seem to start with the first book.

I should add that there are several ongoing sources of translated Russian stories and excerpts, too: Rossica, from Academia Rossica, and Readings/Чтения, from Russian Information Services. Glas has also published a number of anthologies of translations, and the Glas Web site includes many samples.

A slightly off-topic note about a book that had already been translated: late fall 2009 brought two new translations of Ilf and Petrov’s Золотой телёнок: The Golden Calf from Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson (Open Letter) and The Little Golden Calf from Anne O. Fisher (Russian Information Services). Either Calf would make a fine holiday gift. I haven’t (and won’t!) compare the quality of the translations but have observed, based on my online preview of the Open Letter book and an advance copy of the book from Russian Information Services, that the books show clear differences in philosophy.

I’m not trying to be diplomatic when I say that I don’t honestly know which one I’d choose if I were buying a gift (likely to happen soon) or planning a first-time reading of the book. On the one hand, I like Open Letter’s philosophy of minimalist notes. Notes distract me because I compulsively look to see if I’m missing something. On the other hand, cultural differences mean notes will help readers understand the book, so the RIS book’s detailed historical introduction, hundreds of notes, plus two appendices are pretty useful and, yes, fun to read. Interestingly enough, Complete Review’s review calls the Open Letter book’s explanatory notes “a very limited and almost random grab-bag: more (or none) would have been preferable.” All that aside, I often like to say that the best translation is the one you’re most likely to read and love, so compare the first pages for yourself on Open Letter’s site or Look Inside from Amazon.

Disclosure: I received complementary copies of three books and one journal mentioned in this post: Rasskazy, Life Stories, The Little Golden Calf, and Чтения/Readings. I always welcome notifications about new translations.

Rasskazy on Amazon
Life Stories on Amazon
Boris Akunin on Amazon
Do Time Get Time on Amazon
An Awkward Age on Amazon
There Once Lived a Woman... on Amazon
Night Roads on Amazon
The Dacha Husband on Amazon
Memories of the Future on Amazon
A Jewish God in Paris on Amazon
The Stranger (The Labyrinths of Echo) on Amazon
The Golden Calf on Amazon
The Little Golden Calf on Amazon

Red Star and Bunin Prize Finalists

Some unconnected bits of news:

1. Sunday’s New York Times Book Review ran a short piece describing David King’s 350-page Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin. (Link here) The online version of the review, which also covers other books, includes a slide show with a photo of Stalin, lying in state, amid flowers and fronds. Writes reviewer Steven Heller, “What a relief it must have been for so many to see him in such a tableau.”

2. The Bunin Prize people named a short [?] list of 15 finalists. This year the award covers books of commentary. (full list in Russian) The nominees include two writers also known for their fiction: Zakhar Prilepin and Aleksandr Prokhanov. Both have won the National Bestseller award. Prokhanov’s winning book, Господин Гексоген (Mister Hexogen) is on my to-read shelf.

The Bunin nominee that interests me most is literary critic Lev Danilkin’s Нумерация с хвоста. Путеводитель по русской литературе (Numbering from the Tail. A Guidebook to Russian Literature. The title refers to the conventions of numbering cars on passenger trains.). A brief excerpt is available on ozon.ru, here. I’ve enjoyed Danilkin’s writings on contemporary fiction ever since I read his analysis of Boris Akunin’s Fandorin novels, using the short novel Декоратор (The Decorator) as a defining moment. (in Russian here)

3. Also, before I forget, The Complete Review posted a very favorable review (here) of Il’f and Petrov’s Золотой телёнок (The Golden Calf), which is due out soon in a new translation. (previous post) I’m enjoying my Il’f&Petrov-fest: somewhere I noticed a reader’s comment that The Twelve Chairs acts like an anti-depressant, so it makes a sunny change of pace after Makanin’s Underground!

Photo from Jazza, via stock.xchng

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Akunin and Akhmatova

It’s nice that the Russian Cyrillic and Roman alphabets both begin with A… And that the gift of a Boris Akunin book, Любовница смерти (The Lover [fem.] of Death), pushed me to begin reading in Russian again back in 2001.

Akunin’s first nine books in the Новый детективъ (New Detective) series, starring Erast Fandorin, are wonderfully entertaining books that contain numerous allusions to Russian classics. Fandorin, whom Akunin purposely made vulnerable and appealing to women, knows martial arts, is a natty dresser, and wins in games of chance. The books take place in roughly 1875-1900 and are a wonderful combination of period atmosphere and postmodern techniques.

Each of the New Detective books is intended to represent a subgenre of detective novels: conspiratorial, hermetic, spy, and so on. Unfortunately, to borrow the terms of a Russian woman I once met, I think Akunin wrote himself out after the first nine Fandorin books: the prequels and sequels felt like potboilers, particularly the story where Fandorin visits the Wild West.

I read the Fandorin series out of order, starting with the eighth book, but I’d recommend beginning with the beginning, Азазель (The Winter Queen), and following the list. But… Non-Russian readers getting a start reading in Russian might want to begin with the Lover books: my recollection is that their language is much easier. Suspense makes detective novels a great way to take up reading in a foreign language.

Part of the fun of the Fandorin books is picking out references to classics. The Winter Queen plays on themes from Nikolai Karamzin’s “Бедная Лиза” (“Poor Liza”), which is fitting for the first book since Karamzin’s 18^th-century sentimental tale is one Russian literature’s earliest classics. 

One of my Fandorin books, Особые поручения (Special Assignments), includes an excellent piece by critic Lev Danilkin that discusses Akunin’s technique, calling him a Jack the Ripper of a writer who tears apart the canon and reassembles it. Danilkin also notes that Russian readers feel comfortable with the series because of familiarity with subtexts and characters. I read the books so quickly the first time (the suspense!) that I’d like to reread them to catch more of the allusions.

Though I don’t read a lot of poetry, I want to mention Anna Akhmatova, whose “Реквием” (“Requiem”) [Russian-English page] is a haunting cycle of poems about the Stalinist repression. I have a particular affinity for “Requiem” because a Russian theater troupe performed it here in Portland, in Russian, in a beautiful production composed entirely of poetry. The Anna Akhmatova Museum is one of my favorite places in St. Petersburg. (The photo shows a monument to Akhmatova near the Kresty prison, which is mentioned in “Requiem.”)

The A-List for Future Reading: Petr Aleshkovskii’s Рыба. История одной миграции (Fish. The Story of One Migration) is tops on my list for when I finish War and Peace. Another A-book on my shelf is Viktor Astaf’ev’s Печальный детектив (The Sad Detective). Chingiz Aitmatov’s Плаха (The Scaffold) is out on loan but I’m particularly curious about it after reading Amateur Reader’s accounts of Aitmatov’s И дольше века длится день (The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years).

Boris Akunin on Amazon

Anna Akhmatova on Amazon
Peter Aleshkovsky on Amazon
Chingiz Aitmatov on Amazon
Viktor Astaf'ev on Amazon