Russian author Akunin reveals 'female penname'

"Boring is the writer who never wanted to be an authoress. That is to try to imagine: what it is like to be a woman and look at the world through a woman's eyes," he said in his Wednesday blog post.
"I imagined an educated lady which entered the age of freedom when children have already grown up, the mind is mature and character formed," said Akunin, whose real name is Grygory Chkhartishvili.
"Consider I was envious of Lyudmila Ulitskaya," he said, referring to one of Russia's best-loved modern authors.
He wrote three novels under the female pseudonym but all three books sold fewer than 200,000 copies.
Akunin said the experiment -- which also saw him write several historical novels under another penname Anatoly Brusnikin -- was now over.
"It's time to part ways," said the author, who in the past weeks has also become one of the most vocal voices in the nascent protest movement against Vladimir Putin's 12-year rule.
The blog post also features the "portrait" of Anna Borisova, which is made of merged pictures of Akunin and his wife Erika.
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