Pelagia and the Red Rooster (with transcript)

The new edition of the novel «Pelagia and the Red Rooster», supplemented with the chapter «Transcript».

In this section, Boris Akunin describes how the work on the book progressed, what ideas and events formed its basis, and how the characters were developed.

This time, the tangled thread that sister Pelagia unravels leads her too far — to a place of no return. The story begins on the steamboat «Sevryuga», sailing along the Volga, where a motley company is gathered — the thief Kolobok, German colonists, a family of sodomites heading to the revived Sodom, a group of Doukhobors sailing to Canada, archbishop Mitrofan with a nun and a secretary, Jews with Rabbi Aron Shefarovich making a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, «foundlings» (Russians who converted to Judaism) with their leader Manuila, and secret «Christ's oprichniki»… And during this voyage, while Kolobok was systematically picking the pockets of the passengers, the murder of Mr. Manuila occurs, just like Kolobok, during his next theft.