Russian philology
poet Dmitry Prigov. A relatively new trend in Russian literature is that female short story
writers Tatyana Tolstaya or Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, and novelists Lyudmila Ulitskaya or
Dina Rubina have come into prominence. The tradition of the classic Russian novel continues
with such authors as Mikhail Shishkin and Vasily Aksyonov.
Detective stories and thrillers have proven a very successful genre of new Russian literature:
in the 1990s serial detective novels by Alexandra Marinina, Polina Dashkova and Darya
Dontsova were published in millions of copies. In the next decade Boris Akunin who wrote
more sophisticated popular fiction, e.g. a series of novels about the 19th century sleuth Erast
Fandorin, was eagerly read across the country.
Science fiction was always well selling, albeit second to fantasy, that was relatively new to
Russian readers. These genres boomed in the late 1990s, with authors like Sergey
Lukyanenko, Nick Perumov, Maria Semenova, Vera Kamsha, Alexey Pekhov, Anton