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The Turkish Gambit: A Novel

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Overview

"[Akunin] writes gloriously pre-Soviet prose, sophisticated and suffused in Slavic melanchioly and thoroughly worthy of nineteenth-century forebearers like Gogol and Chekhov." -Time It is 1877, and war has broken out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Bulgarian front resounds with the thunder of cavalry charges, the roar of artillery, and the clash of steel on steel during the world's last great horse-and-cannon conflict. Amid the treacherous atmosphere of a nineteenth-century Russian field army, former diplomat and detective extraordinaire Erast Fandorin finds his most confounding case. It's difficulties are only compounded by the presence of Varya Suvorova, a deadly serious (and seriously beautiful) woman with revolutionary ideals who has disguised herself as a boy in order to find her respected comrade- and fiancé-Pyotr Yablokov, an army cryptographer. Even after Fandorin saves her life, Varya can hardly bear to thank such a "lackey of the throne" for his efforts. But when Yablokov is accused of espionage and faces imprisonment and execution, Varya must turn to Fandorin to find the real culprit . . . a mission that forces her to reconsider his courage, deductive mind, and piercing gaze.

Editorial Reviews

If chatty digressions on love and war tend to slow the third Erast Fandorin historical to appear in the U.S. (after 2004's Murder on the Leviathan), Russian author Akunin does a superb job of rendering the immediacy of battle in the 1877-1878 conflict between the Motherland and Turkey, and illuminating the politics behind czarist fantasies of recapturing Constantinople. At the Balkan front, the quiet, stuttering Fandorin befriends Varya Suvorova, a midwife turned telegraphist. Varya is bent on visiting her court-martialed fiance, who's accused of being a spy. Fandorin and Varya are soon caught up in the fortunes of the Russian army, which a well-placed mole seems intent on betraying. Suspicions point to various Russian staff officers and to some glamorous foreign correspondents, including Seamus McLaughlin from London's Daily Post and Michel Paladin from the Revue Parisienne. Codes, courtesans and love letters all come into play, as well as murder and suicide in combat, in a plot more complex than some West Point battle plans. While the plethora of minor characters can be confusing, the quirky Fandorin and determined Varya stand out amid the turmoil of their surroundings. Agent, Linda Michaels Ltd. (Mar. 15) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in the republic of Georgia in 1956; he is a philologist, critic, essayist, and translator of Japanese. He published his first detective stories in 1998 and in a very short time has become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. He has written nine Erast Fandorin novels to date, and is working on two other series as well. Akunin enjoys almost legendary popularity in Russia. He lives in Moscow.

Bio of Andrew Bromfield

Andrew Bromfield is a founding editor of the Russian literature journal Glas. He is best known for his acclaimed translations of Victor Pelevin and Boris Akunin, and his work has been short-listed for numerous translation prizes.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Random House

Filesize

634.34 KB

Number of Pages

240

eBook ISBN

9781588364395

Excerpt from: The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin

In which a progressive woman finds herself in a quite desperate situation

la revue parisienne (Paris)

14 (2) July 1877

Our correspondent, now already in his second week with the Russian Army of the Danube, informs us that in his order of the day for yesterday, 1st July (13th July in the European style), the Emperor Alexander thanks his victorious troops, who have succeeded in forcing a crossing of the Danube and breaching the borders of the Ottoman state. His Imperial Majesty's order affirms that the enemy has been utterly crushed and in no more than two weeks time at the very most the Orthodox cross will be raised over Saint Sophia in Constantinople. The advancing army is encountering almost no resistance, unless one takes into account the mosquito bites inflicted on the Russian lines of communication by flying detachments of the so-called Bashi-Bazouks (mad-heads), a species of half-bandit and half-partisan, famed for their savage disposition and bloodthirsty ferocity.

According to St. Augustine, woman is a frail and fickle creature, and the great obscurantist and misogynist was right a thousand times over at least with regard to a certain individual by the name of Varvara Suvorova.

It had all started out as such a jolly adventure, but now it had come to this. She only had her own stupid self to blame Mama had told Varya time and again that sooner or later she would land herself in a fix, and now she had. In the course of one of their many tempestuous altercations, her father, a man of great wisdom and endowed with the patience of a saint, had divided his daughter's life into three periods: the imp in a skirt; the perfect nuisance; the loony nihilist. To this day Varya prided herself on this characterization, declaring that she had no intention of resting on her laurels as yet, but this time her self-confidence had landed her in a world of trouble.

Why on earth had she agreed to make a halt at the tavern this korchma, or whatever it was they called the abominable dive. Her driver, that dastardly thief Mitko, had started whining, using those peculiar Bulgarian endings: Let's water the hossesta, let's water the hossesta. So they had stopped to water the horses. Oh, God, what was she going to do now.

Varya was sitting in the corner of a dingy and utterly filthy shed at a table of rough-hewn planks, frightened to death. Only once before had she ever experienced such grim, hopeless terror: when at the age of six she broke her grandmother's favorite teacup and hid under the divan to await the inevitable retribution.

If she could only pray'but progressive women didn't pray. And, meanwhile, the situation looked absolutely desperate.