Reading in Reykjavík

Title: The Winter Queen Original Russian title: Azazel Translator: Andrew Bromfield Series detective: Erast Petrovich Fandorin No. in series: 1 Year of publication: 1998 Type of mystery: Conspiracy, murder, thriller Type of investigator: Police Setting & time: Russia: Moscow & St. Petersburg, England: London; 1876 Some themes: Obsession, love, social improvement Story: Young Erast Fandorin, a lowly police clerk of good family but small means, is sent to investigate a mysterious suicide in Moscow. This leads him to a beautiful and mysterious woman who is not all what she seems. Events lead him to London where he discovers that she is involved in some kind of conspiracy. From then on, his life is in constant danger. Review: I didn’t really know what to expect when I picked up this book, and after reading the first couple of chapters I wasn’t sure whether I was reading a mystery or the parody of one, so parodic, almost satirical at times, is the style. Akunin has a way...

Author: Lesley Chamberlain Year published: 1996 Genre: Travelogue Chamberlain, a former reporter, returns to post-Communist Russia to travel down the Volga. She writes of her journey, people she meets and places she visits, and enriches the travelogue with history, literature and legends connected with the river. Review: The author obviously has a rather uneasy relationship with Russia and her people. Even though she speaks the language, she finds it hard to understand them: their thinking processes are alien to her and she finds their behaviour contradictory, but she loves the country and its literature and searches for understanding through literary texts, history, legends and the landscape. Trying to understand and analyse the Russian soul proves to be harder than she expected, and she ends up alienated and suffering from culture shock. The writing is straightforward, journalistic and matter of fact, with an occasional poetic burst. Rating: An uneasy voyage down one of the worl...