Erast Fandorin

{{Short description|Fictional detective in novels by Boris Akunin}}

{{Infobox character

| name = Erast Petrovich Fandorin

| image = 250 px

| caption = Oleg Menshikov as Erast Fandorin in the 2005 movie The State Counsellor.

| first = The Winter Queen

| last = The Pit

| creator = Boris Akunin

| portrayer = Oleg Menshikov
Egor Beroev
Ilya Noskov
Simon Robson
Piotr Zurawski

| nickname = Funduk (schoolmates); Erasmus (Count Zurov)

| alias = Erast Petrovich Nameless ("He Lover of Death"), Genji ("She Lover of Death"), Erast Petrovich Kuznetsov ("Before the End of the World")

| occupation = April–May 1876: Moscow police clerk
May–September 1876, July 1877-March 1878: Agent of the Third Section
September 1876-July 1877: Volunteer in the Serbian Army
1878-1882: Diplomat
1882-1891: Deputy for Special Assignments under the Governor-general of Moscow
1891-1904: private investigator, engineer and adventurer
1904-1905: Consulting engineer for the Railroad Police Department.

| spouse = Yelizaveta "Lizanka" von Evert-Kolokoltseva (1876), Eliza Altairskaya-Lointaine (1911–1914), Yelizaveta Anatolievna "Mona" Turusova (married 1919)

| gender = Male

| children = "Captain Vasily Rybnikov" (son, 1879–1905), Alexander Fandorine (son), born 1920

}}

Erast Petrovich Fandorin ({{langx|ru|Эраст Петрович Фандорин}}) is a fictional 19th-century Russian detective and the hero of a series of Russian historical detective novels by Boris Akunin.

The first Fandorin novel (The Winter Queen, Russian: Азазель) was published in Russia in 1998, and the latest and the last one in 2023 (The Pit, Russian: Яма). More than 15 million copies of Fandorin novels have been sold as of May 2006,{{cite news | last = Jurjevics | first = Juris | title = The Death of Achilles: A Fandorin Mystery (includes interview with author) | publisher = San Diego Reader | date = 11 May 2006 | url = http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2006/may/11/death-achilles-fandorin-mystery/ | access-date = 18 February 2008}} even though the novels were freely available from many Russian websites and the hard copies were relatively expensive by Russian standards.[http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.14112/pub_detail.asp Leon Aron, "A Private Hero for a Privatized Country" in Russian Outlook] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060816081041/http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.14112/pub_detail.asp |date=2006-08-16 }}, retrieved 17 August 2006. New books in the Fandorin series typically sell over 200,000 copies in the first week alone, with an unparalleled (for mystery novels) first edition of 50,000 copies for the first books to 500,000 copies for the last.[http://azerbaijan-irs.com/12834/erast-fandorin-umer-v-baku-uvidel-svet-poslednij-roman-borisa-akunina-iz-fandorinskogo-cikla-chernyj-gorod/} Early news of All the World's a Stage sales]{{Dead link|date=August 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, retrieved 18 March 2010.[http://www.forschungsstelle-osteuropa.de/con/images/stories/pdf/kultura/kultura_1_2006_EN.pdf Yulia Idlis, "B. Akunin's Fandorin Saga: To Be Continued?", Kultura 1, 2006, pp. 10-15], retrieved 23 September 2006 (PDF).

The English translations of the novels have been critically acclaimed by, among others, Ruth Rendell.[http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7178-11.cfm Ruth Rendell, Fiction: The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin trans by Andrew Bromfield, The Sunday Times, 12 May 2003] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060928065830/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7178-11.cfm |date=28 September 2006 }}, retrieved 26 September 2006.

Background

In the Soviet Union, detective novels enjoyed mass popularity. Although they were seen as a "low genre" by the communist officials, both local (such as Igor (Georgy) Vayner and Julian Semenov), and foreign detective novels have always been avidly coveted.Sofya Khagi, [https://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/13/khagi13.shtml "Boris Akunin and Retro Mode in Contemporary Russian Culture"], Toronto Slavic Quarterly {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140123005122/http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/13/khagi13.shtml |date=2014-01-23 }}, retrieved 11 September 2006.[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/30/MNGPJIFPRH1.DTL&feed=rss.news San Francisco Chronicle, "Russian writer is onto a rare thing -- a series of good detective novels"], retrieved 17 August 2006.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many trashy detective novels were published that featured a lot of gore and sex.[http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7184-21.cfm Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, "A Russian intellectual turns to crime (fiction)"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060908085243/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7184-21.cfm |date=2006-09-08 }}, retrieved 11 September 2006. Akunin's wife, in common with many other Russians,[http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no9/brodsky.html Vsevolod Brodsky, Context, Letter from Russia] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060827113917/http://centerforbookculture.org/context/no9/brodsky.html |date=2006-08-27 }}, retrieved 11 September 2006. started to enjoy reading this genre of literature. However, she did not want to be seen reading the novels and she always wrapped them in brown paper to prevent people from seeing what she was reading.[https://web.archive.org/web/20070308055325/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/04/18/boakunin.xml&sSheet=/arts/2004/04/18/bomain.html Telegraph, "The masked man"], retrieved 17 August 2006[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B06E1DE113AF930A25754C0A9659C8B63 Richard Lourie, New York Times, "If Pushkin had written mysteries"], retrieved 18 August 2006. This inspired Akunin to create a detective novel which nobody would be ashamed to be caught reading, something between the literature of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and the pulp of modern Russian detective novels.[http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article305249.ece The Independent, "Boris Akunin: The riddler of Russia"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070312193241/http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article305249.ece |date=2007-03-12 }}, retrieved 29 August 2006

He set out to write a cycle about Fandorin with an exploration of every subgenre of the detective novel in mind, from spies to serial killers. In addition, he wanted to address different types of human character in his books. As Akunin identified sixteen subgenres of crime novels, as well as sixteen character types, the novels in the Erast Fandorin series ultimately numbered sixteen, with the final novel, Not Saying Goodbye, published in 2018. The series is titled {{lang|ru|Новый детективъ}} (New detective, or New Mystery). This title serves to set the novels apart from the postmodernist intellectual novels as well as from the trashy detective novels, but it is also a subtle play on the use of time in the novels.

Akunin uses many historical settings for his novels. He uses the war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire as background for the novel The Turkish Gambit; the death of the "White General" Mikhail Skobelev (as 'Mikhail Sobolev') in The Death of Achilles; and the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and the Khodynka Tragedy for Coronation, or the Last of the Romanovs. Akunin uses the gaps in the knowledge of these histories to create an atmosphere for his mystery novels to which readers can relate.

Adaptations

=Film=

=Television=

  • Azazel (2002): a miniseries starring Ilya Noskov
  • Television Theater: "Lewiatan" (2021): feature length Polish adaptation of Murder on the Leviathan starring Piotr Zurawski
  • Fandorin: Azazel (2023): a six episode series starring Vladislav Tiron, with the setting updated to the present day

=Audio=

  • The Saturday Play: "Murder on the Leviathan" (2005): BBC Radio drama starring Simon Robson{{cite web |title=The Saturday Play: Murder on the Leviathan|url=https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/54077bb20eec492ebfd501f36b074511 |access-date=April 26, 2023|work=BBC Radio Genome}}

References

{{reflist|2}}

External sources

  • [http://www.russiaprofile.org/culture/article.wbp?article-id=E4B2C5F6-4B6A-4F30-B356-9220B7682174 Dmitry Babich, "The Return of Patriotism?"]{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, retrieved 17 August 2006.
  • [http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=787 Rebecca Reich, The St. Petersburg Times, "Akunin's plot thickens"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928003454/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=787 |date=2007-09-28 }}, retrieved 17 August 2006.
  • [http://akunin.ru/knigi/fandorin/erast/ Author's Website: www.akunin.ru] Includes the complete texts, in Russian, of the first six Erast Fandorin novels.
  • Fan site [https://web.archive.org/web/20060615065913/http://www.fandorin.ru/fandorin/index.html Fandorin.ru]
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20090624075201/http://museum.fandorin.ru/ Erast P. Fandorin Virtual Museum]
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20050816203438/http://english.mn.ru/english/issue.php?2005-9-27 The Moscow News, "Boris Akunin: Murder by Cliches"], retrieved 7 September 2006.
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20060929033924/http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.20204,filter.all/pub_detail.asp Leon Aron, "A champion for the bourgeoisie: reinventing virtue and citizenship in Boris Akunin's novels" in The National Interest, Spring 2004], retrieved 29 September 2006.
  • Akunin [http://www.lib.ru/RUSS_DETEKTIW/BAKUNIN/ website] containing the Russian texts of all Erast Fandorin novels through The Diamond Chariot

{{Boris Akunin}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fandorin, Erast}}

Category:Characters in detective novel series

Category:Characters in Russian novels of the 21st century

Category:Literary characters introduced in 1998

Category:Fictional characters from the 19th century

Category:Fictional Russian detectives

Category:Fictional Russian police detectives

Category:Fictional Russian Empire people

Category:Fictional Russian people in literature

Category:Novel sequences

Category:Novels by Boris Akunin