The Writer and Suicide by Boris Akunin. Short summary

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A study of suicide as a social and psychological phenomenon. Suicide in the writing environment — the phenomena of creativity, the vicissitudes of fate that gave rise to the terrible step.

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Causes of suicide through the prism of social, religious, professional, philosophical aspects. Phenomena of writing as presented in studies of Nietzsche, Kafka, Dahl, Berdyaev, and Blanchot as causes of suicide in the writing community.

Illustration of research by little-known facts of statistics on suicide. The attitude of various religions toward man’s fatal decision. The fates of writers who committed suicide-more than three hundred tragic stories.

Biographical sketches of writers’ lives and reasons for literaryicide: from the literati of ancient Greece (Socrates, Diogenes, Antisphenes) to Russian writers of the Soviet period (Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Tsvetaeva, Shpalikov). Each of them has its own reason for voluntarily departing from life. But regularities do exist.