Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin (Russian: Борис Акунин) is the pen name of Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili (Russian: Григорий Шалвович Чхартишвили; Georgian: გრიგოლ ჩხარტიშვილი) (born May 20, 1956), a Russian writer of Georgian origin. He is an essayist, literary translator and writer of detective fiction. Grigory Chkhartishvili has also written under pen names Anatoly Brusnikin and Anna Borisova. Chkhartishvili was born in Zestafoni to a Georgian father and Jewish mother, and since 1958 has lived in Moscow. Influenced by Japanese Kabuki theatre, he joined the historical-philological branch of the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University as an expert on Japan. He worked as assistant to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Foreign Literature, but left in October 2000 to pursue a career as a fiction writer. Under his given name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, he serves as editor-in-chief of the 20-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature, chairman of the board of a large "Pushkin Library " (Soros Fund), and is the author of the book The Writer and Suicide (Moscow, The New Literary Review, 1999). He has also contributed literary criticism and translations from Japanese, American and English literature under his own name.