Grigori Chkhartishvili, better known by his pen name Boris Akunin, is a Georgian-Russian writer residing in the United Kingdom. He is best known as a writer of historical fiction, specifically his Erast Fandorin novels. He is also an essayist and literary translator. Grigory Chkhartishvili has also written under pen names Anatoly Brusnikin, Anna Borisova, and Akunin-Chkhartishvili. His characters include Erast Fandorin, Nicholas Fandorin and Sister Pelagia.

Erast Petrovich Fandorin is a fictional 19th-century Russian detective and the hero of a series of Russian historical detective novels by Boris Akunin.