SOVIET UNION AUTHOR · FICTION · HISTORY
Boris Akunin
Also known as: Akunin Boris., BORIS AKUNIN
Russian writer of detective and historical fiction.
Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin.
— from Leviathan, 1985
Most acclaimed
Leviathan
1985
"Leviathan begins when a woman finds an address book and steals a new identity. Or it begins with a sudden, violent death. Or it begins as Peter Aaron sits down to tell the story of his best friend, Benjamin Sachs - to take us, through a life, to the road in rural Wisconsin where Sachs has accidentally blown himself up. Aaron's sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it, before those who are investigating the case invent a story of their own.". "Aaron's clues are the small mysteries of any lifetime. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he admired, a circle of friends he shared. And then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that might or might not have been intentional, Sachs disappears. For a while, Aaron's only link to him is through Maria Turner, an artist, and the one witness to Sachs's balcony plunge. Periodically, Sachs reappears, talks manically, and vanishes again - in pursuit of mercy or salvation, in thrall to an idea.". "Since the first book in his brilliant and acclaimed "New York Trilogy," Paul Auster's "rare combination of talent, scope, and audacity" (The New Republic) has given us worlds in which chance and destiny collide, in which solitary protagonists take us on mysterious, soul-wrenching journeys unparalleled in contemporary fiction. His seventh novel is about friendship and betrayal, sexual desire and estrangement, and the unpredictable intrusions of violence in the everyday. Rooted in American mythology and archetype, Leviathan is both timeless and resolutely about this moment. It is a daring and immensely moving story by "one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers" (The Times Literary Supplement)."--BOOK JACKET.
Quest
1980
A collection of stories about people in search of other lands, other planets, and alien intelligences.
The Winter Queen
"Here is the story of Elizabeth of Bohemia (1596-1662), the 'Winter Queen'. Daughter of James VI of Scotland (James I of England) and Anne of Denmark, she married Frederick V, Elector of Palatine. Her husband's acceptance of the throne of Bohemia in 1619 precipitated the Thirty Years War. Both Bohemia and Palatine were lost and the royal family fled to Holland where they lived in extreme poverty, dogged by misfortune." "Throughout this period, by sheer force of her personality, beauty and courage, Elizabeth maintained her role at the centre of her court-in-exile. She lived long enough to see her son Charles Louis restored to the electorate. Her daughter Sophia was the mother of George I of England. This beautifully written biography also paints pictures of late Shakespearean England in which she spent her youth and of the Restoration England to which she returned in old age."--Jacket.