Erast Fandorin
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Erast Petrovich Fandorin (Russian: Эраст Петрович Фандорин) is a fictional 19th-century Russian detective and the hero of a series of Russian historical detective novels by Boris Akunin. The first novel was published in Russia in 1998, and the latest was published in November 2006.[1] More than 15 million copies of Fandorin novels have been sold as of May 2006,[2] even though the novels were freely available from many Russian web-sites and the hard-copies were relatively expensive for Russian standards.[3] New books in the Fandorin series typically sell over 200,000 copies in the first week alone,[3] with an unparallelled (for mystery novels) first edition of 50,000 copies for the first books to 500,000 copies for the last.[4][1] In Russia, the Fandorin series rivals The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter in popularity.[4] The English translations of the novels have been critically acclaimed by, among others, Ruth Rendell.[5]
[edit] Concept of the series
In the Soviet Union, many novels were severely censored or prohibited from being published. Although detective novels were not forbidden, reading these novels was discouraged by the communist regime.[6][7] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many trashy detective novels were published that featured a lot of gore and sex.[8] Akunin's wife, in common with many other Russians,[9] started to enjoy reading this genre of literature. However, she did not want to be seen reading the novels and she always wrapped them in brown paper to prevent people from seeing what she was reading.[7][10][11] This inspired Akunin to create a detective novel which nobody would be ashamed to be caught reading,[11] something between the literature of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and the pulp of modern Russian detective novels.[12]
He set out to write a cycle about Fandorin with an exploration of every subgenre of the detective novel in mind, from spies to serial killers.[2] In addition, he wanted to address different types of human character in his books. As Akunin identified sixteen subgenres of crime novels, as well as sixteen character types, the novels in the Erast Fandorin series will ultimately number sixteen. As of November 2006, twelve novels have been published in Russia. The series is titled Новый детективъ (New detective, or New Mystery). This title serves to set the novels apart from the postmodernist intellectual novels as well as from the trashy detective novels,[4] but it is also a subtle play on the use of time in the novels.[6]
Akunin uses many historical settings for his novels. He uses the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire as background for the novel The Turkish Gambit; the death of the White General Mikhail Skobelev (in the novel called Sobolev) in the novel The Death of Achilles; and the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and the Khodynka Tragedy for Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs. Akunin uses the gaps in the knowledge of these histories to create an atmosphere for his mystery novels to which readers can relate.[4]
[edit] Personal life
[edit] Biography and career
Akunin describes in The Winter Queen how Erast Fandorin was orphaned at the age of nineteen. He never knew his mother, and his father died bankrupt, leaving only debts. Fandorin had to abandon his education at Moscow University and was forced to enter the police force as a clerk. Since the events in The Winter Queen take place in the spring of 1876 (when Akunin says Fandorin is twenty) he must have been born in 1856. Further hints at Fandorin's ancestry are given in another novel, Altyn Tolobas, one of four novels set in the present day and featuring Fandorin's grandson Nicholas, where Akunin writes how Captain Cornelius von Dorn, a German hussar, entered Russia in the 1680s. Fandorin is a russification of the name von Dorn.
Akunin also describes in The Winter Queen how Fandorin falls in love with a seventeen-year-old girl, whom he meets while he is investigating his first case. On their wedding day, she was killed by a bomb in a package addressed to Fandorin himself. At the time of the explosion, Fandorin was out pursuing the person who delivered the bomb and thus miraculously escaped without harm. This experience turned him into a cynic of sorts.
In The Turkish Gambit Fandorin is charged with the capture of a Turkish spy during the war between Russia and the Ottoman empire. Upon his return, he requests to be stationed in a remote post, and becomes second secretary to the Russian ambassador in Japan. His adventures in Japan are detailed in the second part of The Diamond Chariot. In Japan, he saves the life of the fallen samurai Masa, who becomes his manservant as a token of gratitude. He learns martial arts, and trains in them every day with Masa. In The Death of Achilles Akunin describes how Fandorin returns to Russia, only to find his old friend General Mikhail Sobolev murdered.
In The Councillor of State, Fandorin is accused of the attempted murder of the Governor of Moscow. After he clears his name, Fandorin is offered the job of Oberpolizeimeister but declines, instead he resigns from public service and becomes a private investigator. In Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs, Fandorin prevents an international scandal from occurring during the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in 1896.
Allusions to the fate of Erast Fandorin are made in Altyn Tolobas. Late in life Fandorin marries again and has at least one son, Alexander, in exile in London in 1920. Alexander's son, Nicholas Fandorin, is born around 1960.
[edit] Physical appearance and other characteristics
Boris Akunin provides the reader with a vivid portrait of Erast Fandorin. Fandorin is of average height, with a thin build. He has a small moustache, blue eyes and black hair. The death of his wife caused his hair to turn grey at the temples almost overnight, as described in The Winter Queen. It also caused him to stammer, but this tends to diminish as tensions rise. Fandorin is always impeccably groomed and can be vain about his appearance; in The Winter Queen he wears a corset to improve his figure. He is a gifted linguist; in various novels he speaks English, French, German and Japanese with fluency.
In every novel Fandorin is described as a master of disguise, which he uses to infiltrate criminal hideouts and in stakeouts. When he is disguised, he does not stammer at all. In Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs, Fandorin explains that this is because he always takes on the personality of the disguise, which often requires that he should not stammer. In The Winter Queen, he learns to present evidence by making a list: "That is one. That is two. And that is three". He is brave and determined, and has to kill several men during his investigative career, but he is still sickened by the sight of blood. While in Japan, he learns the art of the ninjas (or "silent ones", as they are referred to in the novels). He is physically fit and athletic. In his later years, Fandorin becomes an enthusiast of the newly invented automobile.
Fandorin is exceptionally lucky, a common trait in the Fandorin family that skips every other generation; allusions to this character trait appear in every novel. He never loses a bet, and wins at all sports. He has however lost the appetite for gambling, as it soon became boring. He can be popular with the opposite sex, partly because he still mourns the loss of his first wife - this sadness seems to attract women.[3]
[edit] Allusions and references to other works
According to Akunin, he mixed several of the most sympathetic heroes of Russian literature to form the Erast Fandorin character.[13] One of these heroes is Chatsky from Alexander Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, from whom Fandorin inherits his sense of duty: "To serve the cause, not the individuals".[3] Other heroes Erast Fandorin is based upon, are Andrei Bolkonski (from Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace), Prince Mishkin (from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot) and Pechorin (from Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time).[10]
Akunin said he "plots along the line of Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day".[14] The orphaned urchin Senka, the narrator of The Lover of Death, is clearly based upon Oliver Twist (also pointed out by the subtitle of that novel: a Dickensian story).[3] The entire first volume of The Diamond Chariot is an allusion to Alexander Kuprin's Junior Captain Rybnikov,[6] and the opening sentence of The Winter Queen is a clear reference to Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.[6] A more subtle allusion exists to Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, as the novel The Winter Queen starts with a suicide in 1876, the exact same year in which Anna throws herself under a train.[4] Another allusion to Anna Karenina can be found in The Jack of Spades, where Fandorin's current girlfriend, who is married to another man, has the same patronymic (Arkadievna) as Anna Karenina herself. In Murder on the Leviathan, one of the newspaper fragments is signed by G. du Roy, an allusion to the journalist Georges Duroy from Guy de Maupassant's Bel Ami.[4]
In The Death of Achilles the hired killer Achimas is mentioned as having been secretly hired by the Italian government to kill an anarchist nicknamed "The Jackal" who plans to kill King Umberto - yet Achimas himself bears considerable similarity to the hired killer nicknamed "The Jackal" and who plans to kill de Gaulle in Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal".
[edit] Novels
[edit] List
The following list describes the novels in the order they were written, with the original titles in Russian and the publication dates for the Russian and English versions.
| English title | Russian title | Published in Russian | Translated into English | ISBN Russian novel | ISBN English translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Winter Queen | Азазель (Azazel) | 1998 | 2003 | ISBN 5-8159-0049-4 | ISBN 0-7538-1759-4 |
| The Turkish Gambit | Турецкий гамбит | 1998 | 2005 | ISBN 5-8159-0050-8 | ISBN 0-7538-1999-6 |
| Murder on the Leviathan | Левиафан (Leviathan) | 1998 | 2004 | ISBN 5-8159-0095-8 | ISBN 0-7538-1843-4 |
| The Death of Achilles | Смерть Ахиллеса | 1998 | 2005 | ISBN 5-8159-0056-7 | ISBN 0-7538-2097-8 |
| Special Assignments | Особые поручения | 1999 | 2007 | ISBN 5-8159-0007-9 | ISBN 0-297-84822-4 |
| The State Counsellor | Статский советник | 2000 | 2008 | ISBN 5-8159-0060-5 | ISBN 0-297-84823-2 |
| Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs | Коронация, или Последний из романов | 2000 | ISBN 5-8159-0059-1 | ||
| The Mistress of Death | Любовница смерти | 2001 | ISBN 5-8159-0152-0 | ||
| The Lover of Death | Любовник смерти | 2001 | ISBN 5-8159-0495-3 | ||
| The Diamond Vehicle | Алмазная колесница | 2003 | ISBN 5-8159-0371-X | ||
| Jade Rosary Beads | Нефритовые Четки | 2006 | ISBN 978-5-8159-0648-8 |
[edit] The Winter Queen
Moscow, 1876. The young Erast Fandorin, recently orphaned, enters the police service and is asked to investigate the high-profile suicide of a student. After another student is murdered, the trail leads to the beneficiary of both students' estates, an international network of schools for orphaned boys, led by an English noblewoman. They have a secret goal: world domination. When Fandorin confronts the noblewoman with his findings, she apparently kills herself. Fandorin rounds up the network, but on his wedding day he receives a package with a bomb. While Fandorin chases the delivery man, the bomb goes off, and his bride is killed.
[edit] The Turkish Gambit
Pleven, 1877. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, an encrypted message is mysteriously altered, leading to strategic gains by the Turks. Everyone believes a young army officer is responsible, but Fandorin believes it to be the work of a Turkish spy.
[edit] Leviathan
Red Sea, 1878. A murder investigation leads a French inspector to Egypt, where the cruise ship Leviathan is about to set sail to Japan. Fandorin is one of the passengers as he is entering diplomatic service in Japan. Every passenger becomes a suspect, while Fandorin slowly uncovers a plot to steal a large Indian treasure.
[edit] The Death of Achilles
Moscow, 1882. After four years of diplomatic service in Japan, Fandorin returns to Moscow with his Japanese manservant Masa. He arrives just in time to hear about the tragic death of war hero Mikhail Sobolev, who apparently was planning a coup d'état. A briefcase with one million rubles is stolen, and Fandorin must see to it that Sobolev's honor is reinstated. His enemy turns out to be an old acquaintance.
[edit] Special Assignments
Special Assignments (Russian: Особые поручения) is a single volume containing two different Erast Fandorin novellas, The Jack of Spades (Russian: Пиковый валет) and The Decorator (Russian: Декоратор).
[edit] "The Jack of Spades"
Moscow, 1886. Fandorin pursues a crafty con man.
[edit] "The Decorator"
Moscow, 1889. Several women are brutally murdered. Fandorin sees parallells with the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
[edit] The State Counsellor
Moscow, 1891. Disguised as Fandorin, the leader of a revolutionary organization commits a murder attempt at the governor of Moscow. Fandorin has to catch him to prove his innocence. He is assisted (or is it hindered) in his investigations by prince Pozharsky, a fictional descendant of Dmitry Pozharsky, who helped bring the Time of Troubles to an end.
[edit] Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs
Moscow, May 1896. The imperial family moves to Moscow for the coronation of tsar Nicholas II. However, Nicholas' nephew Mikhail is abducted and the kidnapper asks a diamond from the sceptre as ransom. The absence of the diamond in the sceptre would create an international scandal, and Fandorin, now retired from public service, is asked to track down the kidnapper.
[edit] The Mistress of Death
1900. Fandorin deals with a suicide club. The action takes place contemporaneously with the events of The Lover of Death below. It is told from the point of view of 'Colombina', a Moscow debutante from Irkutsk who is unaware of Fandorin's other involvements.
[edit] The Lover of Death
Moscow 1900. The action takes place contemporaneously with the events of The Mistress of Death above. It is told from the point of view of Senka, a Khitrovka boy, who is unaware of Fandorin's other involvements.
[edit] The Diamond Vehicle
This novel consists of two parts. In the first part, set during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, with Fandorin in charge of protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage. In the second part, set in 1878 and 1879, Fandorin's arrival in Yokohama and his adventures there are told, how he came to meet his servant Masa and how he succeeded in finding a Ninjutsu teacher. The title Алмазная Колесница "Diamond Vehicle" refers to the Kongōjō school of Tantric Buddhism. The first part is structured as a haiku, with each chapter taking the place of a syllable, while in the second part, a haiku is placed at the end of each chapter.
[edit] Jade Rosary Beads
Jade Rosary Beads (Russian: Нефритовые четки) is the latest book describing Fandorin's adventures in the 19th century. It was issued in Russia on 21 November 2006. The book contains three novellas and seven short stories, some of which take Fandorin abroad to England, America, and Rio de Janeiro. It is illustrated by Igor Sakurov.[1]
[edit] Stage
With Yin and Yang, Akunin also wrote a play featuring Fandorin, but the play is not included in the novel series. Subtitled A theatrical experiment, it features a white and a black version. When a wealthy man dies, Fandorin is brought in to clarify some points of the will. After the murder of several characters, Fandorin (assisted by his manservant Masa) needs his sleuthing skills once more. The black version leads to a diametrical opposed result from the white version, due to some minor changes in evidence found in the beginning of the play. This play is notable for the comic element introduced by Masa's limited knowledge of Russian -- he has begun copying out words from the dictionary but so far has gotten only to the letter "D." The play was written for director Aleksey Borodin.
[edit] Typography
Akunin uses typography to enhance the story that is being told. Newspaper stories are typeset in a different font (see The Turkish Gambit}. He even goes so far that chapters written from the perspective of a Japanese (see Leviathan) are rotated ninety degrees to give the illusion of traditional Japanese writing. (This effect is omitted in some English editions of Leviathan.)
[edit] Translations
Novels from the Erast Fandorin series have been translated into more than 30 languages.[4] Because Akunin saw the English-language market as key to the rest of the world, he was very cautious when selecting the person who was allowed to translate the Fandorin novels into English, eventually choosing Andrew Bromfield.[2] Each of the first five Fandorin novels have been translated into English, with the sixth, The State Counsellor, scheduled for January 2008. Random House, the American publisher, published only the first four novels.[8] The British publisher is Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Each of the first three translated novels have sold over 50,000 copies in the UK alone. [15] The Winter Queen has been described as the possible result if Aleksandr Pushkin would have written mystery novels and Andrew Bromfield is lauded as one of England's finest translators from the Russian.[11] Critics were also very favorable about Murder on the Leviathan, but less so about The Turkish Gambit, which offers a far slower pace than The Winter Queen.[16] The Death of Achilles has again been received very positively.[17][18]
The first 10 novels have been translated into German, with the eleventh due in October 2006. Dutch publisher De Geus has completed its announced translations of the first seven novels.[19] Translations for the other novels have not yet been announced. In Italian and French, the first 8 novels have been translated. The first five novels have been translated in Norwegian.
[edit] Adaptations
Azazel was filmed for television in 2003 by Alexander Adabashyan, and has also been adapted for the stage in Russia.[20] Reviews of the play have not been very favorable and have called it long, windy, talky and situational,[20] or entertaining but plodding.[21] Paul Verhoeven owns the rights to a future English-language film version.[22]
In 2005, two further Fandorin novels, The Turkish Gambit and The Councillor of State, were made into big-budget movies by Dzhanik Faiziyev and Filip Yankovsky respectively. The adaptation of The Turkish Gambit set a new box office record with 19.23 million USD,[23] beating The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by more than 5 million USD.[24] It was met by criticism from the Russian military, who said the film stains the memory of general Mikhail Skobelev.[25] The Turkish Gambit won three Golden Eagle Awards (best art design, best costume design and best film editing), while The Councillor of State won two awards (best leading actor for Nikita Mikhalkov and best supporting actor for Konstantin Khabensky).[26]
Yin and Yang has also been performed on stage in Russia, with both versions performed back-to-back on two consecutive days. They met with critical acclaim. [21] As of this writing (September 2006), all Erast Fandorin films, plays and television programs have been made in Russian only.
The Winter Queen has also been adapted as a comic strip by Aleksey Kuzmichev.
[edit] Awards
- The Crime Writers' Association of Britain nominated Akunin for the 2003 Dagger Awards for The Winter Queen, a translation of the novel "Azazel".[27]
- Murder on the Leviathan was nominated for Best European Crime Novel in the Gumshoe Awards 2005.[28]
- Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs won the Russian Anti-Booker 2000 in the category Brothers Karamazov.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b (Russian)First review of Jade Rosary Beads, retrieved 22 november 2006.
- ^ a b c San Diego Reader, "Reading: The Death of Achilles: A Fandorin Mystery", retrieved 18 August 2006.
- ^ a b c d e Leon Aron, "A Private Hero for a Privatized Country" in Russian Outlook, retrieved 17 August 2006.
- ^ a b c d e f g Yulia Idlis, "B. Akunin's Fandorin Saga: To Be Continued?", Kultura 1, 2006, pp. 10-15, retrieved 23 September 2006 (PDF).
- ^ Ruth Rendell, Fiction: The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin trans by Andrew Bromfield, The Sunday Times, 12 May 2003, retrieved 26 September 2006.
- ^ a b c d Sofya Khagi, Toronto Slavic Quarterly, "Boris Akunin and Retro Mode in Contemporary Russian Culture", retrieved 11 September 2006.
- ^ a b San Francisco Chronicle, "Russian writer is onto a rare thing -- a series of good detective novels", retrieved 17 August 2006.
- ^ a b Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, "A Russian intellectual turns to crime (fiction)", retrieved 11 September 2006.
- ^ a b Vsevolod Brodsky, Context, Letter from Russia, retrieved 11 September 2006.
- ^ a b Telegraph, "The masked man", retrieved 17 August 2006
- ^ a b c Richard Lourie, New York Times, "If Pushkin had written mysteries", retrieved 18 August 2006.
- ^ The Independent, "Boris Akunin: The riddler of Russia", retrieved 29 August 2006
- ^ Patrick Lannin (Reuters), "Russian gentleman detective tops bestseller lists", 19 Februari 2001, retrieved 26 September 2006.
- ^ Boris Akunin's interview with NPR's All things considered, 31 July 2000, retrieved 29 September 2006 (RealAudio required).
- ^ Times Online, "A Russian's revolution", retrieved 29 August 2006.
- ^ The Boston Globe, "Mystery charms with misdirection", retrieved 29 August 2006
- ^ The Boston Globe, "Akunin delights again with 'Achilles' whodunit", retrieved 29 August 2006
- ^ The Washington Times, "Fandorin in Moscow", retrieved 29 August 2006
- ^ (Dutch)Author info on Boris Akoenin by Dutch publisher De Geus
- ^ a b The Moscow Times, "When the characters don't live up to the craftmanship", retrieved 8 September 2006
- ^ a b The Moscow Times, "Seeing double", retrieved 8 September 2006
- ^ The many dreams of Paul Verhoeven, retrieved 18 August 2006
- ^ Mosnews, Costume Drama Beats Foreign Competition at Russian Box Office"", 8 April 2005, retrieved on 30 September 2006.
- ^ Berliner Zeitung, "Ich liebe die Russen" (German), retrieved 29 August 2006
- ^ The Guardian, "Russian military bombards hit film", retrieved 8 September 2006.
- ^ Golden Eagle Awards 2005 (Russian).
- ^ 2003 Dagger Awards
- ^ Gumshoe Awards 2005
[edit] External sources
- Dmitry Babich, "The Return of Patriotism?", retrieved 17 August 2006.
- Rebecca Reich, The St. Petersburg Times, "Akunin's plot thickens", retrieved 17 August 2006.
- Author's Website: www.akunin.ru Includes the complete texts, in Russian, of the first six Erast Fandorin novels.
- Official Website: Fandorin.ru
- Erast P. Fandorin Virtual Museum
- Councillor of State movie homepage
- The Moscow News, "Boris Akunin: Murder by Cliches", retrieved 7 september 2006.
- Leon Aron, "A champion for the bourgeoisie: reinventing virtue and citizenship in Boris Akunin's novels" in The National Interest, Spring 2004, retrieved 29 September 2006.
- Akunin website containing the Russian texts of all Erast Fandorin novels except for Jade Rosary Beads
| Books by Boris Akunin |
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Erast Fandorin Series: The Winter Queen | The Turkish Gambit | Murder on the Leviathan | The Death of Achilles | Special Assignments Nicholas Fandorin Series: Altyn Tolobas | Out-of-School Reading | F.M. Sister Pelagia Series: Pelagia and the White Bulldog | Pelagia and the Black Monk | Pelagia and the Red Rooster Series Genres: Children's Book | Spy Novel | Science Fiction Other works: Comedy/Tragedy | Fairy Tales for Idiots | The Seagull |
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