{"id":94269,"date":"2024-07-14T09:06:07","date_gmt":"2024-07-14T09:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/14\/from-exile-in-london-a-crime-novelist-works-to-transform-russia\/"},"modified":"2024-07-14T09:06:07","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T09:06:07","slug":"from-exile-in-london-a-crime-novelist-works-to-transform-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/14\/from-exile-in-london-a-crime-novelist-works-to-transform-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"From Exile in London, a Crime Novelist Works to Transform Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/07\/04\/multimedia\/00russia-writer-profile-wqkv\/00russia-writer-profile-wqkv-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"From Exile in London, a Crime Novelist Works to Transform Russia\" title=\"From Exile in London, a Crime Novelist Works to Transform Russia\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Hundreds of Russians packed an auditorium in central London on a recent warm evening to listen as Boris Akunin, the author of a wildly popular detective series, told them that when it came to the Ukraine war, \u201cI believe that the actions of the Russian Army are criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Akunin\u2019s series, set in late czarist times, made him rich and famous, but outspoken statements like that one have made him more infamous of late back home in Russia. The Kremlin recently labeled <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/20\/best-selling-russian-writer-turns-from-crime-to-history\/\" title=\"\">the author<\/a> \u2014 who went into self-imposed exile in London a decade ago \u2014 a \u201cterrorist\u201d and effectively banned his works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When President Vladimir V. Putin ordered <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/news-event\/ukraine-russia\" title=\"\">the invasion of Ukraine<\/a> in February 2022, Mr. Akunin wrote on Facebook, \u201cRussia is ruled by a psychologically deranged dictator and worst of all, it obediently follows his paranoia.\u201d At that time, he began contemplating how cultural figures fleeing abroad might still reach their domestic audience and perhaps help to spur change at home. Being cut off from his own readers lent the project special urgency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI have to say, the amount of work and writing I\u2019ve been doing over these two terrible years, never in my life have I written so much,\u201d he told the audience members, who laughed when he said that a writing binge trumped a drinking binge. \u201cIt is a form of escapism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Akunin, 68, was not exactly a slacker before the war. One of his Russian publishers estimated that he had sold at least 30 million books in Russia. His roughly 90 works include novels, plays and an extended history of the Russian state. Various writings have been translated into more than 40 languages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His position in Russia\u2019s literary world crumbled last December, however, after two pro-Kremlin pranksters phoned him, pretending to be senior Ukrainian officials. He told them that attacking Russia militarily was justified in wartime, and mentioned raising money for Ukrainian refugees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Akunin, long a vocal Kremlin critic, left Russia in 2014 to protest the country\u2019s <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/19\/world\/europe\/ukraine.html\" title=\"\">illegal annexation of Crimea<\/a>. But the broadcast of the prank call proved to be a tipping point with the Russian authorities, even after Mr. Akunin denied their accusation that he had donated money to the Ukrainian military.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI don\u2019t want to take part in anything that is to kill my compatriots, even if they are wrong,\u201d he told the London audience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Russian government labeled him a \u201cforeign agent,\u201d after adding him to a list of \u201cterrorists and extremists.\u201d Criminal investigators raided one of his publishers, interrogating employees and impounding thousands of his books. In February, a Moscow district court ordered him arrested in absentia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He remains sanguine about his own safety, but widespread distribution of his books in Russia essentially ended lest the businesses involved be accused of spreading \u201cextremist\u201d material. One of Russia\u2019s largest publishers and several major bookstore chains halted sales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a lengthy interview in London, Mr. Akunin, who has a bald pate, a white beard and an impish twinkle behind oval, gold-rimmed glasses, admitted to feeling bitter about the blocking of his sales to Russian readers, both at home and because overseas, Western stores online reject Russian credit cards. But he tried to make light of the situation. \u201cI am going to get a lot of new fans,\u201d he said, imagining a horde of Russian criminal investigators hunting for signs of extremism in his books.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Boris Akunin is a pen name, reflecting his wide-ranging interests in language and history. Akunin is the Japanese word for \u201cvillain\u201d; Mikhail Bakunin was a leading 19th-century Russian anarchist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Born Grigory Chkhartishvili in Georgia, he grew up in Moscow, where his mother\u2019s family were ardent Communists. As a boy, he once complained to his grandmother that he disliked porridge, and she told him: \u201cYou don\u2019t have to like porridge, you have to eat it. You have to like Lenin and the Communist Party.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Transfixed as a teenager by samurai rituals, he studied Japanese history at Moscow State University, then worked at a prestigious literary journal. He gained a reputation for erudite Russian translations of works in Japanese or English.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the late 1990s, he banged out his first detective novel in only six weeks. The manuscript was stylish, written in impeccable Russian, and had an intriguing plot, recalled Irina Bogat, whose publishing company, Zakharov, then a new imprint, took the book.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The work, published in 1998 as \u201cAzazel\u201d in Russian and later translated into English as \u201c<a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/07\/13\/books\/chapters\/the-winter-queen.html?searchResultPosition=15\" title=\"\">The Winter Queen,<\/a>\u201d featured a swashbuckling detective named Erast Fandorin. But booksellers found the name weird. Nobody wanted the book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Two years passed, with two more Fandorin books, when sales suddenly exploded amid an effort by a cult following to divine the real name of the author, Ms. Bogat said. Print runs mushroomed after the books inspired at least six films or television series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, a comic television actor before his political career, even <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UtWa7eioo5E\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">used the Fandorin character<\/a> in one silly pastiche.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI was around 40 at the time, so instead of finding a new wife, I found a new profession, because I sort of like my wife,\u201d Mr. Akunin said. He and his wife, Erika, have been a couple for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The books were \u201camazing for the epoch,\u201d said Galina Yuzefovich, a well-known Russian literary critic. \u201cThere had been no mainstream literature, written with the idea of entertaining the growing urban middle class,\u201d she said. \u201cI think he did great things for Russian literature \u2014 building, inventing the Russian mystery novel, a new type.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Fandorin books are mostly set in Russia\u2019s Silver Age, starting in the late 19th century, a period of artistic and political ferment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Fandorin is often called the Russian Sherlock Holmes. He \u201cis like a national superhero, and we didn\u2019t really have any,\u201d Tim Kojevnikov, 26, a U.S.-educated businessman who left Russia when he was 12, said at the London lecture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Akunin did provoke the occasional critic. Aleksei Tarkhanov, a Russian cultural journalist, called him \u201cthe Ikea of Russian literature\u201d \u2014 elevated design but low quality. \u201cHe allowed the \u2018intelligent reader\u2019 to read trash and not be tormented by remorse, because his pulp fiction is demonstratively literary,\u201d Mr. Tarkhanov <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/seance.ru\/articles\/akunin-mn23\/?ysclid=ly8lut4hz7797333711\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">wrote.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After 15 Fandorin books, Mr. Akunin is done with the character, he said. His newer novels are denser, gloomier, more philosophical \u2014 and far less popular. \u201cThey are typical difficult Russian novels where you read and you sweat and you recite and you cry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His most ambitious project has been a 10-volume history of the Russian state, each written with a companion historical novel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Akunin\u2019s lecture, on May 9, coincided with the release of the latest volume, \u201cThe Destruction and Resurrection of the Empire,\u201d about the Lenin and Stalin years. His basic thesis is that Russia has considered centralized empire-building to be something sacred since the 15th century. The Ukraine war is Mr. Putin\u2019s striving to do it again, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Moscow, Mr. Akunin would labor on one book at his kitchen table, writing others in different bedrooms. In exile, he follows the same routine, but on a grander scale. He writes history in London; serious nonfiction amid the gloomy weather of northern France; and lighter fare at a third home in southern Spain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He compares the widening gulf between Russians at home and abroad to two groups standing on an iceberg that is slowly cleaving in two, with some people leaping across a divide that will eventually yawn too wide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In May, he introduced an online platform where writers, filmmakers, theater directors, musicians and other artists could stream their work, charging viewers a small fee. He also expanded <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/babook.org\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the website for selling his books<\/a> to include many other authors banned in Russia. After he refused to stop selling \u201cHeritage,\u201d a new novel by <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/04\/16\/books\/vladimir-sorokin-russia-ukraine.html\" title=\"\">the best-selling author Vladimir Sorokin<\/a>, also living in exile, the site was blocked in Russia in late June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the 1970s, Russians hankering for icons of Western culture like bluejeans, Coca-Cola and the Beatles helped to undermine the Soviet Union. So Mr. Akunin hopes that a vibrant Russian culture abroad might develop similar appeal as domestic <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/25\/world\/europe\/russia-playwright-director-terrorism-trial.html\" title=\"\">artistic freedom<\/a> withers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Some critics find that idea overly optimistic, both because Russians at home often think the diaspora disdains them and because repression has not deadened all artistic expression.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">For the inauguration of his cultural platform, Mr. Akunin used images generated using A.I. to create a manga-like comic adapted from a Nikolai Gogol story. \u201cClassical Russian literature is the best way to escape from classical Russian dictatorship,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-798hid etfikam0\">Alina Lobzina<!-- --> contributed reporting from London, and <!-- -->Milana Mazaeva<!-- --> from New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/07\/14\/world\/europe\/russia-ukraine-boris-akunin-writers-exile.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of Russians packed an auditorium in central London on a recent warm evening to listen as Boris Akunin, the author of a wildly popular detective series, told them that when it came to the Ukraine war, \u201cI believe that the actions of the Russian Army are criminal.\u201d Mr. Akunin\u2019s series, set in late czarist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/07\/04\/multimedia\/00russia-writer-profile-wqkv\/00russia-writer-profile-wqkv-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2187,54698,7196,39185,202,27084,4053],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94271,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94269\/revisions\/94271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}