Playing with History
Boris Akunin’s Thrillers
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Why are Boris Akunin’s thrillers selling so well? Akunin knows the Russian readers’ needs: their passion for the criminal novel, their interest in their own history. This dual demand suits Akunin fine. He writes historical thrillers, employing the techniques of post-modernism. In effect, a new view of old times emerges – a Russia stripped of its melancholy and the national search for meaning.
(Osteuropa 9/2006, pp. 109–120)