Popular Russian author Boris Akunin announces British TV adaption of detective series

Best-selling Russian contemporary author Boris Akunin has announced that part of his famous 13-book series of detective novels, The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, will be turned into a British TV show. While Akunin has said that he cannot yet disclose which channel will air the show due to legal reasons, he has confirmed that three of the series’ novels — The Death of Achilles, The State Councillor and The Coronation — will be adapted for screen.

“Since Russian TV channels have completely lost interest in adapting The Adventures of Erast Fandorin any further in recent years, I have signed a contract with the British,” Akunin wrote on Facebook. “Now, Ernst Petrovich [the series’ protagonist] will not speak Russian on screen, but English.”

In March 2013, Akunin announced that he would no longer write detective novels, instead spending time on a series of books on the history of the Russian state.

“I’m no longer a detective writer. I will of course finish the Fandorin series, but the focus of my work has become a multi-volume project, The History of the Russian State,” Akunin wrote on his LiveJournal blog in 2013. “I myself, in spite of an education in history, do not fully understand our history. This is the main reason why I took up this task. I want to understand how our government was formed, how it evolved and why it has become what it is today.”

The first novel from the series The Adventures of Erast Fandorin, The Winter Queen, was published in 1998, with the latest tale The Black City published in November 2012. The Adventures of Erast Fandorin has been translated into over 35 languages and has sold over 25 million copies worldwide.