Erast Fandorin

Erast Petrovich Fandorin (Template:Langx) is a fictional 19th-century Russian detective and the hero of a series of Russian historical detective novels by Boris Akunin.

The first Fandorin novel (The Winter Queen, Russian: Азазель) was published in Russia in 1998, and the latest and the last one in 2023 (The Pit, Russian: Яма). More than 15 million copies of Fandorin novels have been sold as of May 2006,<ref name="SDReader">Template:Cite news</ref> even though the novels were freely available from many Russian websites and the hard copies were relatively expensive by Russian standards.<ref name="Aron">Leon Aron, "A Private Hero for a Privatized Country" in Russian Outlook Template:Webarchive, retrieved 17 August 2006.</ref> New books in the Fandorin series typically sell over 200,000 copies in the first week alone,<ref name="Aron"/> with an unparalleled (for mystery novels) first edition of 50,000 copies for the first books to 500,000 copies for the last.<ref name="regnum">Template:UsurpedTemplate:Dead link, retrieved 18 March 2010.</ref><ref name = "Idlis">Yulia Idlis, "B. Akunin's Fandorin Saga: To Be Continued?", Kultura 1, 2006, pp. 10-15, retrieved 23 September 2006 (PDF).</ref>

The English translations of the novels have been critically acclaimed by, among others, Ruth Rendell.<ref>Ruth Rendell, Fiction: The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin trans by Andrew Bromfield, The Sunday Times, 12 May 2003 Template:Webarchive, retrieved 26 September 2006.</ref>

Background

In the Soviet Union, detective novels enjoyed mass popularity. Although they were seen as a "low genre" by the communist officials, both local (such as Igor (Georgy) Vayner and Julian Semenov), and foreign detective novels have always been avidly coveted.<ref name="Khagi">Sofya Khagi, "Boris Akunin and Retro Mode in Contemporary Russian Culture", Toronto Slavic Quarterly Template:Webarchive, retrieved 11 September 2006.</ref><ref name="sfgate">San Francisco Chronicle, "Russian writer is onto a rare thing -- a series of good detective novels", retrieved 17 August 2006.</ref>

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many trashy detective novels were published that featured a lot of gore and sex.<ref name="Myers">Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, "A Russian intellectual turns to crime (fiction)" Template:Webarchive, retrieved 11 September 2006.</ref> Akunin's wife, in common with many other Russians,<ref name="Brodsky">Vsevolod Brodsky, Context, Letter from Russia Template:Webarchive, retrieved 11 September 2006.</ref> 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.<ref name="sfgate"/><ref name="Masked">Telegraph, "The masked man", retrieved 17 August 2006</ref><ref name="Lourie">Richard Lourie, New York Times, "If Pushkin had written mysteries", retrieved 18 August 2006.</ref> This inspired Akunin to create a detective novel which nobody would be ashamed to be caught reading,<ref name="Lourie"/> something between the literature of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and the pulp of modern Russian detective novels.<ref name="Riddler">The Independent, "Boris Akunin: The riddler of Russia" Template:Webarchive, retrieved 29 August 2006</ref>

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.<ref name="SDReader"/> 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 ultimately numbered sixteen, with the final novel, Not Saying Goodbye, published in 2018. The series is titled {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (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,<ref name="Idlis"/> but it is also a subtle play on the use of time in the novels.<ref name="Khagi"/>

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 (as 'Mikhail Sobolev') in 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.<ref name = "Idlis"/>

Adaptations

Film

• The Turkish Gambit (2005): a theatrically released film starring Egor Beroev
• The State Counsellor (2005): a theatrically released film starring Oleg Menshikov

Television

• Azazel (2002): a miniseries starring Ilya Noskov
• Television Theater: "Lewiatan" (2021): feature length Polish adaptation of Murder on the Leviathan starring Piotr Zurawski
• Fandorin: Azazel (2023): a six episode series starring Vladislav Tiron, with the setting updated to the present day

Audio

• The Saturday Play: "Murder on the Leviathan" (2005): BBC Radio drama starring Simon Robson<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

External sources

• Dmitry Babich, "The Return of Patriotism?"Template:Dead link, retrieved 17 August 2006.
• Rebecca Reich, The St. Petersburg Times, "Akunin's plot thickens" Template:Webarchive, retrieved 17 August 2006.
• Author's Website: www.akunin.ru Includes the complete texts, in Russian, of the first six Erast Fandorin novels.
• Fan site Fandorin.ru
• Erast P. Fandorin Virtual Museum
• 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 through The Diamond Chariot