The Death Of Achilles
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The Death Of Achilles
The Death of Achilles (russian: Смерть Ахиллеса) is the fourth novel in the Erast Fandorin historical detective series by Boris Akunin. Its subtitle is ''детектив о наемном убийце'' ("a detective novel about a murderer-for-hire"). It was originally published in Russian in 1998; the English translation was released in 2006. Plot Moscow, 1882. When Fandorin returns from Japan with his manservant Masa, he enters the service of Moscow governor Prince Dolgorukoi. Later that day, the White General Mikhail Sobolev, nicknamed the Russian Achilles and an old friend of Fandorin's, is found dead in the same hotel. Officially, he died of a heart attack, but Fandorin becomes suspicious when he talks with the body guards of the general. Fandorin had befriended these cossacks when he rooted out a Turkish spy during the siege of Plevna (see ''The Turkish Gambit''). But the same cossacks now treat him with hostility. Fandorin finds out the reason for thei ...
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Andrew Bromfield
Andrew Bromfield is a British editor and translator of Russian works. He is a founding editor of the Russian literature journal ''Glas'', and has translated into English works by Boris Akunin, Vladimir Voinovich, Irina Denezhkina, Victor Pelevin, and Sergei Lukyanenko, among other writers. Bibliography (as a translator) Victor Pelevin :Stories and novellas *" The Blue Lantern" *" Bulldozer Driver's Day" *"Crystal World" *"Hermit and Six-Toes" *" The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII" *" Mid-Game" *" News from Nepal" *" Nika" *" The Ontology of Childhood" *" Prince of Gosplan" *"Sleep" *"Tai Shou Chuan USSR (A Chinese folk tale)" *" The Tambourine of the Upper World" *" The Tarzan Swing" *" Vera Pavlovna's Ninth Dream" *"A Werewolf Problem In Central Russia" *"The Yellow Arrow" :Novels *"The Life of Insects" *"Omon Ra" *" Clay Machine Gun" ("Chapayev and Void", "Buddhas Little Finger") *"Homo Zapiens" ("Babylon", "Generation "П") *" The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus an ...
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Siege Of Plevna
The siege of Pleven, was a major battle of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, fought by the joint army of Russia and Romania against the Ottoman Empire. After the Russian army crossed the Danube at Svishtov, it began advancing towards the centre of modern Bulgaria, with the aim of crossing the Balkan Mountains to Constantinople, avoiding the fortified Turkish fortresses on the Black Sea coast. The Ottoman army led by Osman Pasha, returning from Serbia after a conflict with that country, was massed in the fortified city of Pleven, a city surrounded by numerous redoubts, located at an important road intersection. After two unsuccessful assaults, in which he lost valuable troops, the commander of the Russian troops on the Balkan front, Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia insisted by telegram the help of his Romanian ally King Carol I. King Carol I crossed the Danube with the Romanian Army and was placed in command of the Russian-Romanian troops. He decided not to make any more ...
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Mikhail Skobelev
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Skobelev (russian: Михаил Дмитриевич Скобелев; 29 September 1843 – 7 July 1882), a Russian Empire, Russian general, became famous for his conquest of Central Asia and for his heroism during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Dressed in a white uniform and mounted on a white horse, and always in the thickest of the fray, he was known and adored by his soldiers as the "White General" (and by the Turks as the "White Pasha"). During a campaign in Khiva, his Turkmen people, Turkmen opponents called him ''goz ganly'' or "Bloody Eyes". British Field Marshal (United Kingdom) , Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery assessed Skobelev as the world's "ablest single commander" between 1870 and 1914 and wrote of his "skilful and inspiring" leadership. Francis Vinton Greene also rated Skobelev highly. Early life and Conquest of Khiva Skobelev was born in Saint Petersburg on 29 September 1843. His mother was Russian ph ...
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Paedophile
Pedophilia ( alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12, criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13. According to DSM-5-TR, a person must be at least 16 years old, and at least five years older than the prepubescent child, for the attraction to be diagnosed as pedophilic disorder. Pedophilia is distinguished from pedophilic disorder in the current version of the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM-5-TR) . The DSM-5-TR defines it as a paraphilic disorder involving intense and recurrent sexual urges, fantasies or behaviors about prepubescent children that have either been acted upon or which cause the person with the attraction distress or interpersonal difficulty. Similar to DSM-5-TR, the ICD-11 ...
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Charles De Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to restore democracy in France. In 1958, he came out of retirement when appointed President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) by President René Coty. He rewrote the Constitution of France and founded the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum. He was elected President of France later that year, a position to which he was reelected in 1965 and held until his resignation in 1969. Born in Lille, he graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1912. He was a decorated officer of the First World War, wounded several times and later taken prisoner at Verdun. During the interwar period, he advocated mobile armoured divisions. During the German invasion of May 1940, he led an armoured divisio ...
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The Day Of The Jackal
''The Day of the Jackal'' (1971) is a political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France. The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read. The novel is historical fiction: The OAS, as described did exist and the book opens with an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962. The subsequent plot, however, is fiction. Plot summary Part One: Anatomy of a Plot The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on de Gaulle's life plotted by, among others, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart. Following ...
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King Of Italy
King of Italy ( it, links=no, Re d'Italia; la, links=no, Rex Italiae) was the title given to the ruler of the Kingdom of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The first to take the title was Odoacer, a barbarian military leader, in the late 5th century, followed by the Ostrogothic kings up to the mid-6th century. With the Frankish conquest of Italy in the 8th century, the Carolingians assumed the title, which was maintained by subsequent Holy Roman Emperors throughout the Middle Ages. The last Emperor to claim the title was Charles V in the 16th century. During this period, the holders of the title were crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy. A Kingdom of Italy was restored from 1805 to 1814 with Napoleon as its only king, centered in Northern Italy. It was not until the Italian unification in the 1860s that an independent Kingdom of Italy covering the entire Italian Peninsula was restored. From 1861 the House of Savoy held the title of ''King of Italy'' until ...
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The Valley Of Fear
''The Valley of Fear'' is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the ''Strand Magazine'' between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller. Plot Sherlock Holmes receives a cipher message from Fred Porlock, a pseudonymous agent of Professor Moriarty. After Porlock sends the message, however, he changes his mind for fear of Moriarty's discovering that he is a traitor. He decides not to send the key to the cipher, but he sends Holmes a note telling of this decision. From the cipher message and the second note, Holmes is able to deduce that it is a book cipher and that the book used for the encryption is a common book, large (with at least 534 pages), printed in two columns ...
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A Study In Scarlet
''A Study in Scarlet'' is an 1887 detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in literature. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only eleven complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'' for 1887, are known to exist now, which have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, ''A Study in Scarlet'' is one of only four full-length ...
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Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard. First appearing in print in 1887's ''A Study in Scarlet'', the character's popularity became widespread with the first series of short stories in ''The Strand Magazine'', beginning with " A Scandal in Bohemia" in 1891; additional tales appeared from then until 1927, eventually totalling four novels and 56 short stories. All but one are set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras, between about 1880 and 1914. Most are narrated by the character of Holmes's friend and biographer Dr. John H. Watson, who usually accompanies Holmes during his investigations and often shares quarters with him at the ad ...
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Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, " J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the ''Mary Celeste''. Name Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. His baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arth ...
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Alexander III Of Russia
Alexander III ( rus, Алекса́ндр III Алекса́ндрович, r=Aleksandr III Aleksandrovich; 10 March 18451 November 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894. He was highly reactionary and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II. This policy is known in Russia as "counter-reforms" ( rus, контрреформы). Under the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827–1907), he opposed any reform that limited his autocratic rule. During his reign, Russia fought no major wars; he was therefore styled "The Peacemaker" ( rus, Миротворец, Mirotvorets, p=mʲɪrɐˈtvorʲɪt͡s). It was he who helped forge the Russo-French Alliance. Personality Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich was born on 10 March 1845 at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the second son and third child of Tsesarevich Alexander (Future Alexander II) and his first wife ...
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