Main content
Boris Akunin – Creator of Russia’s Crime Fiction Hero
Russian Boris Akunin aka Grigory Chkhartishvili on the art of writing crime novels.
Boris Akunin is one of Russia’s most widely read contemporary novelists. His crime fiction series with the impossibly brilliant detective Erast Fandorin has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. But Boris Akunin is a pen name. The author’s latest work is written under his real name Grigory Chkhartishvili and is something entirely different – a historical novel set in the time of Peter the Great. Andrea Kennedy meets Grigory in his London home to find out how he writes a novel, finds a plot, uncovers his characters and why moving from country to country every three weeks is essential to his writing.
Producer: Andrea Kennedy
Last on
Tue 16 Jan 201823:32GMT
BBC World Service Australasia, Online, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview & Europe and the Middle East only
Clip
![]()
Closing the door on your lead character of twenty years
Duration: 00:50
Broadcasts
- Tue 16 Jan 201800:32GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa, South Asia, West and Central Africa & East Asia only
- Tue 16 Jan 201803:32GMTBBC World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview & Europe and the Middle East only
- Tue 16 Jan 201804:32GMTBBC World Service South Asia & East Asia only
- Tue 16 Jan 201805:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia
- Tue 16 Jan 201811:32GMTBBC World Service except News Internet
- Tue 16 Jan 201821:32GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Tue 16 Jan 201823:32GMTBBC World Service Australasia, Online, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview & Europe and the Middle East only
