In Debt to Dostoevsky

English-speaking readers are only just now getting used to Russian novelist Boris Akunin’s second translated mystery series, starring Sister Pelagia (Pelagia and the White Bulldog), on top of his books about 19th-century Russian detective Erast Fandorin (The Winter Queen, Special Assignments). There’s no telling when--or if--we’ll see a translation of F.M., a book Akunin saw published in his homeland last May. Wikipedia describes it as a postmodern novel in two volumes “which directly engages [Fyodor Dostoevsky’s] Crime and Punishment.” Of this novel’s plot, the online encyclopedia says:

The new work by the internationally acclaimed author presents a postmodern engagement with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The main character of the book is Nicholas Fandorin, the grandchild of the famous sleuth Erast Fandorin, who seeks the lost variant of Crime and Punishment in modern-day Russia. Another character is Porfiry Petrovich, the detective in Crime and Punishment, from whose perspective the story is told. Thus, the story is relayed through two distinct temporal perspectives: 21st century and 19th century. All the characters from Dostoevsky’s work have counterparts in the more recent time.

British author R.N. (Roger) Morris is probably relieved to see that Akunin’s latest potential best-seller delayed in reaching readers outside the former Soviet Union. After all, Morris’ new novel, The Gentle Axe, also uses Porfiry as its protagonist.