Boris Akunin
Boris Akunin · Arts & Literature
Creator of the Erast Fandorin novels, the most read Russian writer of his generation, in exile since 2014
20 mai 1956, Zestaponi, Géorgie (URSS)
Tbilissi, Moscou, Londres
Boris Akunin is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Creator of the Erast Fandorin novels, the most read Russian writer of his generation, in exile since 2014
Origins and early life
Boris Akunin was born Grigori Chkhartishvili on 20 May 1956 in Zestaponi, in Soviet Georgia, the son of a Georgian artillery officer, Shalva Chkhartishvili, and of a Jewish mother, Berta Brazinskaya, a teacher of Russian trained at Moscow University — the sources converge without ambiguity, and genealogical research has traced her own parents, Isaak Faingold and Tsilia Brazinskaya; he figures in this directory by that documented Jewish mother.
Work and career
A Japanologist and translator of Mishima by training, he invented at forty a pen name and a genre: from 1998 the adventures of Erast Fandorin, a detective of imperial Russia, sold tens of millions of copies and made 'B. Akunin' the most read Russian writer of his generation, while under his own name he wrote a multi-volume history of the Russian state. In 2014, opposing the annexation of Crimea, he left Russia for good and has lived in Britain, France and Spain since; after the invasion of Ukraine the Russian state declared him a 'foreign agent', listed him as a 'terrorist and extremist', pulled his books from the shops, and in 2025 sentenced him in absentia to fourteen years in prison. He keeps writing — a Russian writer whose country has outlawed him.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/05/20/8-facts-about-boris-akunin-russian-literatures-mystifier-in-chief_594525
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Creator of the Erast Fandorin novels, the most read Russian writer of his generation, in exile since 2014
Source: https://www.rbth.com/arts/literature/2016/05/20/8-facts-about-boris-akunin-russian-literatures-mystifier-in-chief_594525
