Boris Akunin

12 – 18 March 2026

by Boris Akunin

Source: Facebook

12 March 2026

It turns out, the oldest person in the world is an Englishwoman. She is 116 and a half years old and the only one of her contemporaries who was born in the first decade of the twentieth century. Of the approximately 65 million children who came into the world in 1909, Ethel Caterham is the only one still alive; of the 200 million born in the years 1910-1912, none are; only 1913 gave us the next oldest supercentenarian, a Brazilian. 

Mrs. Caterham lives in a home for the elderly not far from London. She drove a car for nearly a hundred years, and until recently played bridge. 

For the last 15 years or so, naturally, she has been constantly asked how she explains her longevity.

This is her recipe. Write it down. 

‘I never argued with anyone. I listened to what people had to say and then did what I pleased’.

In the picture is Ethel during the time of the October Revolution and now.

Source: Facebook

13 March 2026

A FATEFUL DAY IN RUSSIAN HISTORY

(from My Calendar)

Today is an anniversary not to be forgotten.

On 13 (1) March 1881, the most fateful event in modern Russian history took place.

In St. Petersburg, on the Ekaterinsky Canal embankment, terrorists bombed the carriage of the very best Russian tsar, Aleksandr II, at the same time killing convoy Cossack Aleksandr Maleichev and 14-year-old Maksim Zakharov, who happened to be nearby. This is what terrorists call ‘collateral damage’. Something like, ‘you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs’. (Good people differ from bad in that they recognize no justification for the death of innocent victims—not the public good, not heaven on earth, nothing).

The blockhead and despot Nikolai I must have been okay for freedom-loving people, who didn’t try to assassinate him. But the ruler who freed the serfs, carried out democratic reforms, and gave the country a mighty push toward development they hunted like an animal. And ultimately killed him.

All that followed was irreversible. Granddad pulls on the radish, granny pulls on granddad. The tsar’s heir reversed the reforms and tightened the screws. The threads were stripped and there was a revolution. Which provoked a brutal civil war. The war led to collapse and chaos, so that it took a dictatorship to restore even a semblance of order. The dictatorship led to mass repressions, divided the people into prisoners and guards, and bred informers and toadies. This mangled and defiled the national mentality, which periodically puts out ugly abscesses. And so on and so forth. There is no end in sight.

But it was all decided on 13 March 1881. Don’t forget that day.

Source: Facebook

14 March 2026

I’ve already written that I enjoy reading the local newspaper that comes out in the quiet town of Saint-Malo. Today there was another article on a favorite topic of any provincial press: ‘how special we are’. The story is indeed striking, although I’m not sure it’s grounds for patriotic pride.

Although, from the standpoint of gender equality, it is quite so. Feminism such as it is.

It turns out, women in olden times dressed in men’s clothing not just to be a lady-cavalryman, or a doctor, or a Pope.

A certain Marguerite Le Paistour, a sea captain’s daughter, born in 1720 in the nearby town of Cancale, where they raise the best oysters in the world, ran away from her evil stepmother dressed in her brother’s clothes. 

She wandered all over France in men’s clothes (it was probably safer that way). She found work as an executioner’s servant. Evidently she was observant and a quick study. She watched her master work closely and maybe assisted. 

She figured, the work isn’t all that hard, it’s not nine to six, lots of days off, and very good pay—after all it’s a rare profession and specialists are in great demand. 

So she herself began working as an executioner under a man’s name. She labored in Lyons for the glory of justice for a little over two years until she was unmasked. A contemporary writes that ‘elle était fort habile dans l’art d’expédier les gens dans l’autre monde’ (she was quite adept in the art of dispatching people to the next world). She did her job as well as her male colleagues. She hanged, branded, and mastered the complicated craft of whipping. 

True, she wasn’t much for female solidarity. One day, Marguerite sent three women criminals at once to the gallows, moreover one of them, who just wouldn’t give up the ghost, she also hung for a while on her shoulders. Evidently her qualifications were not top-notch after all. For example, she was not entrusted with the delicate job of torture.

It all ended sadly. Someone (a maid, it seems) happened to learn that ‘monsieur le bourreau’ was in fact ‘mademoiselle le bourreau’ and gave her away. 

The poor woman was put in a dungeon, although it’s not quite clear on what grounds—simply out of misogyny. She was kept behind bars for a whole year. Then, evidently not having come up with anything to punish her for or simply wishing to avoid a scandal, they let her go.

A happy ending for the story. Marguerite married (some foolhardy hero), returned to her native region, and lived happily ever after. 

Our newspaper writes with understandable pride that this is the only time in France, and maybe in all Europe, when a woman worked as an executioner. 

At least until the twentieth century, when gender discrimination waned and Marguerite found successors. (Google ‘Tonka the Machine-Gun Girl’, for example. There’s real horror for you.)

Source: Facebook

15 March 2026

In England, it’s Mother’s Day today. ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ signs everywhere. I realize this doesn’t mean ‘Day of the Happy Mother’, but for some reason, I’ve been thinking about this, whether my mother was happy.

I’m not sure. Her times—she was born in 1921—were not especially ‘happy’. Nor was the country strongly disposed to happiness. 

I was looking through old photographs. For the most part, for some reason, where my mother is youthful and young—I never saw her like that. Beautiful, I like her. 

But in old age she got even better. Once I asked her, when she was already old, What age were you the happiest? She replied, ‘After 80’. 

I often recall that. I want that, too.

See: https://www.facebook.com/reel/995393053536454

Source: Facebook

16 March 2026

In The Reading Room we have started free-access publication to yet another of our bestsellers, a book by foreign agent and chevalier Oleg Radzinsky: Random Lives.

This is truly one of the best texts I’ve read in the last decade. I recommend it in every way.

The address is indicated on the cover.

Source: Facebook

18 March 2026

TRANSLATIONS FROM BASHO WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

In the name of the zen of detachment (and out of gratitude for Matsuo Basho, whose haiku I used for my literary experiment Basho’s Frog), I decided to translate the great poet’s tercets, choose an illustration for each, and write how I interpreted the poem’s meaning—a good haiku can have many interpretations, sometimes even a great many. Well, in general, the haiku-hokku is interactive poetry. It strikes a spark, and the rest depends on your own fuel.

And so. 

Do bees not regret
Crawling from the peony's
Depths to fly away  

Of all the possible interpretations, I choose the most positive. 

A life was lived. It was splendid, like the blossom of a peony. But once full of honey, the bee decided it had enough. It was time to fly away. Does it regret leaving the flower? We don’t know. But we envy the bee for spending its time so marvelously.

[Here, also, in the first line, Basho has more syllables than the canon dictates (not five but a whole eight), which, in my opinion, points to a supersaturation with pollen and life.] 

Here is the original:

牡丹蕊深く
分け出づる蜂の
名残かな

There’s nothing here about ‘flying away’. Literally, it says the following: ‘Out of the peony’s depths a bee scrambles—isn’t there some regret in that?’ (whose—the bee’s or the observer’s—is unclear grammatically). My translation is the typical Western mastication of Japanese understatement. But in transposing poetry, mood is more important than precision. And anyone who translates a haiku inevitably twists it around in their own way. 

(Engraving 菜乃葉 奈々)

Source: Facebook

Translated by Marian Schwartz