THE WINTER QUEEN: AN ERAST FANDORIN MYSTERY (First UK edition - first impression)

First impression of the first UK edition, and first edition in English translation, being translated from the Russian into English by Andrew Bromfield. *** The first title in the critically acclaimed crime fiction series of novels featuring the 19th-century James Bond, Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin. ***Near fine in blue cloth-covered boards with silver titles to the spine. Head and tail of spine very slightly creased. Boards clean and unmarked. Corners sharp. Page block edges slightly foxed and tanned. No reading lean to the binding. Spine tight. Internally also near fine with no inscriptions. Pages clean. No creases or tears. ***In a near fine colour illustrated dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of £9.99. No creases, chips or tears. No fading. Dustwrapper bright. ***249 pages. 224mm x 142mm. ***'Erast Fandorin has been described as 'the James Bond of the 19th century' - its difficult for a gentleman sleuth to keep his mind on a case when the new Dostoyevsky novel has just hit the shops'. ***'Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of Grigory Chkhartishvili. He has been compared to Gogol, Tolstoy and Arthur Conan Doyle, and his Erast Fandorin books have sold over eight million copies in Russia alone. He lives in Moscow.' (Quotes taken from the dustwrapper flaps). ***'Chkhartishvili "prefers to work with historical material" and has been called the "undisputed champion" of Russian crime fiction given that as Boris Akunin he "has written more than a dozen crime novels and has been widely appreciated by discerning readers, and has been translated into many languages'. ***'After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many trashy detective novels were published that featured a lot of gore and sex. Akunin's wife, in common with many other Russians, started to enjoy reading this genre of literature. However, she did not want to be seen reading the novels and she always wrapped them in brown paper to prevent people from seeing what she was reading. This inspired Akunin to create a detective novel which nobody would be ashamed to be caught reading, something between the literature of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and the pulp of modern Russian detective novels. He set out to write a cycle about Fandorin with an exploration of every subgenre of the detective novel in mind, from spies to serial killers. In addition, he wanted to address different types of human character in his books. As Akunin identified sixteen subgenres of crime novels, as well as sixteen character types, the novels in the Erast Fandorin series ultimately numbered sixteen, with the final novel, "Not Saying Goodbye", published in 2018. The series is titled New detective, or New Mystery. This title serves to set the novels apart from the postmodernist intellectual novels as well as from the trashy detective novels, but it is also a subtle play on the use of time in the novels.' ***'The first Fandorin novel, "The Winter Queen", was published in Russia in 1998, and the latest and the last one, "Not Saying Goodbye", in 2018. The English translations of the novels have been critically acclaimed by, among others, Ruth Rendell'. (Wiki) ***First UK edition of the first of the Erast Fandorin novels to be translated into English, in nice collectable condition. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.…