When I read Boris Akunin’s book The Life of Remarkable People and Animals a year ago, I had no idea that it was merely a selection of entries from the author’s blog. Moreover, it turned out to be the second part, and I had completely missed the first one. Then, one day, I came across a familiar-looking cover in my recommendations—aha, so that’s the first volume! Titled The Un-Chekhovian Intelligentsia.
Let me remind you that both books together (which I now know) form a collection of rather short notes by the author about various interesting people and facts, initially published by Boris Akunin on his blog, and later released as a book with the subtitle Short Stories About All Sorts of Things.
Yet, regardless of how much the author may veil it with this “all sorts of things,” it’s quite clear that he is primarily interested in people and their lives. The topics are very diverse: tyrants and geniuses, holiday histories, revolutionaries and the civil war, British spies and love stories… but all of it revolves around people.
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