Boris Akunin: All the World's a Stage

IZUMI ( ecstatically ) ‘Without honour a man’s life in this world is pointless,’ he said, and abandoned me there in the desolate night. Frozen in horror, I had no chance to ask: ‘And can a woman live in this world without honour?’ Who, then, am I? I am a geisha, my Way is to bring forth feminine beauty, in its imperishable image. And to become imperishable there is one excellent recipe: to make the story of Izumi legend. Let them write poems, let them compose plays about the geisha and the Ninja who gave up their all for love. Both of them were faithful to their art. But when suddenly love blocked off the Way and the barrier was impassable, then they soared into the sky, high above the earth, to where honour and love abide in harmony…

She takes the stiletto out of the casket and looks at it. Then she continues quietly, with no affectation.

All this is foolishness, my beloved. I wish to be with you. And all the rest is no more than a geisha’s empty chatter. Throughout the blackness of eternity you and I are destined to fly, like two comets in a starless sky…

She plunges the stiletto into her throat. The lights go out and immediately two bright beams blaze up above the auditorium, like two comets.

The Winter Queen

Turkish Gambit

Murder on the Leviathan

The Death of Achilles

Special Assignments

The State Counsellor

The Coronation

She Lover of Death

He Lover of Death

The Diamond Chariot

Pelagia and the White Bulldog

Pelagia and the Black Monk

Pelagia and the Red Rooster

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A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

This ebook edition published in 2017 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson

First published in Russian by Zakharov Publications, Moscow, Russia in 2010

Copyright © Boris Akunin 2010

English translation copyright © Andrew Bromfield 2017

The moral right of Boris Akunin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Andrew Bromfield has asserted his right to be identified as the author of the English translation of the work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

978 1 4746 0442 0

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

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That’s right, I suppose.