Please join us for an evening talk with Catherine Merridale about her new detective novel, Moscow Underground. Catherine is an esteemed historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, and in her first fiction book she turns her eye to Stalin’s Moscow, drawing on her encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and the city.
In conversation with Boris Akunin (the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili), a bestselling author of historical crime novels and himself a historian, Catherine will discuss the writing and research of Moscow Underground, the ethics of fictionalising the past, as well as the legacy of Stalin and memory politics in today’s Russia.
Moscow, April 1934. The Soviet leaders are building their glorious new capital, with the Metro as its flagship. Nothing can stand in the way of the labourers tunnelling through the city. While all eyes are fixed on the future, this digging brings the past to light – and some discoveries are worth killing for.
Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials. When a prominent archaeologist working with one of the Metro teams is found murdered in an abandoned mansion, Anton is dragged into the case by his former lover, Vika. Anton wants nothing to do with it – he has his own reasons to keep his head down – yet Vika is now a powerful member of the secret police, and he cannot refuse.
Deep underground, Anton finds a priceless but dangerous secret that links him to a vicious internecine power struggle in the young Soviet state. As he digs into the political intrigue, and the history that binds him to Vika, this investigation could well be his last.
Catherine Merridale is an award-winning writer and broadcaster with an internationally acknowledged expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Her non-fiction writing draws on twenty years of conversations and interviews in Russia and Ukraine, as well as on rare and original archival work. A pioneer of oral history in the region, her first major book, Night of Stone (Granta, 2000), won the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001. Her most recent books, both published by Allen Lane, include Lenin on the Train and Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History, which won the Pushkin House Book Prize and the Wolfson History Prize in 2014. Catherine is a Fellow of the British Academy. More information at Catherine Merridale.
Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in Georgia in 1956. An essayist, historian, playwright and translator, he is best known as the author of crime and historical fiction and has been compared to Gogol, Tolstoy and Arthur Conan Doyle. His books featuring the 19th-century detective Erast Fandorin have sold over 35 million copies in Russia alone and include The Winter Queen, The Turkish Gambit, Murder on the Leviathan, The Death of Achilles and Special Assignments. Akunin also created crime-solving Orthodox nun, Sister Pelagia. He lives in London.
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