Book review: “Diamond chariot” by Boris Akunin
October 13th, 2004 at 3:46 pmFor my “once in a while lighter reading” I took this
book from my parents. They’ve been long praising Akunin
for his detective stories, and given that “Diamond
chariot” is about Japan, I decided to give it a try.
The book has a weird structure: two volumes - the first
about 150 pages long, the second about 550 pages long.
Quite unusual, eh ?
The first volume tells about a Japanese spy in Russia
during the war of 1903. His goal is to detonate an
important railroad, to ruin the Russians’ ability
to transfer food and ammunition to their eastern front.
Akunin’s main character (who appears in many of his
books, I was told) Fandorin takes the detective role,
trying to stop the spy.
The second volume goes 25 years back, when Fandorin
came as a young attache assistant to Yokohama. There,
he goes through many adventures, investigating the
death of a Russian ship-captain, fighting for a woman,
exposing double-agents in the Japanese police, fighting
against, and then with the ninjas, etc. It’s needless
to say that the two volumes are tightly connected. The
end is, at the least, quite shocking.
“Diamond chariot” is a nice, light read. That I finished
a 700 page book in 4 days (with my schedule…) itself
tells a lot. You just can’t put it down… It’s also
full of curious historic and cultural facts. Akunin
studied Japanese history/art and lived in Japan, so the
book is packed with interesting information. I learned
quite a lot about the life in Japan in the end of the 19th
century - the culture, the mix with the foreigners, the
politics. I also didn’t really know much about the Russia vs.
Japan war in the beginning of the 1900s, before I read
the book. I don’t know how much about the ninjas and
various Japanese customs is true, but in any case it
makes a great read.
I confidently recommend this book - it’s really good.
But you would have to know Russian to read it. Or get
your hands on a translation (I don’t know of any, but
I didn’t really look).
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