Pelagia and the Red Rooster (with transcription)

The new edition of the novel «Pelagia and the Red Rooster», supplemented with the chapter «Transcription».
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 from which there is no return. The story begins on the steamer «Sevryuga», sailing on the Volga, where there is a motley company — the thief Kolobok, German colonists, a family of sodomites heading to the revived Sodom, a group of Doukhobors sailing to Canada, Archpriest Mitrophan with a nun and secretary, Jews with Rabbi Aron Shefarovich, making a pilgrimage to the Promised Land, «foundlings» (Russian people who converted to Judaism) with their leader Manuila, and the secret «Christ's Oprichniks»... And during this voyage, while Kolobok was diligently picking the pockets of passengers, the murder of Mr. Manuila occurs, just like Kolobok, during his next theft.