In Moscow, Mr. Akunin would labor on one book at his kitchen table, writing others in different bedrooms. In exile, he follows the same routine, but on a grander scale. He writes history in London; serious nonfiction amid the gloomy weather of northern France; and lighter fare at a third home in southern Spain.
He compares the widening gulf between Russians at home and abroad to two groups standing on an iceberg that is slowly cleaving in two, with some people leaping across a divide that will eventually yawn too wide.
In May, he introduced an online platform where writers, filmmakers, theater directors, musicians and other artists could stream their work, charging viewers a small fee. He also expanded the website for selling his books to include many other authors banned in Russia. After he refused to stop selling “Heritage,” a new novel by the best-selling author Vladimir Sorokin, also living in exile, the site was blocked in Russia in late June.
In the 1970s, Russians hankering for icons of Western culture like bluejeans, Coca-Cola and the Beatles helped to undermine the Soviet Union. So Mr. Akunin hopes that a vibrant Russian culture abroad might develop similar appeal as domestic artistic freedom withers.
Some critics find that idea overly optimistic, both because Russians at home often think the diaspora disdains them and because repression has not deadened all artistic expression.
For the inauguration of his cultural platform, Mr. Akunin used images generated using A.I. to create a manga-like comic adapted from a Nikolai Gogol story. “Classical Russian literature is the best way to escape from classical Russian dictatorship,” he said.
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London, and Milana Mazaeva from New York.
