IN MY LIBRARY

Best-selling Russian crime writer Boris Akunin never quite trusted Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: “A ghost? Seriously? I thought that one day, when I become a writer, I’ll sort it out.” So he has, in “Hamlet: A Version,” at the Theatre of St. Clement’s through May 7. An outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, the writer, born Grigol Chkhartishvili in Soviet Georgia, left Russia in 2014 and hasn’t returned since. “I live in three countries now,” he told The Post. “[I’m] working on nonfiction series in the UK, serious novels in France and entertainment books in Spain.” Here are four of his favorite books about the land he left behind. — Barbara Hoffman

Rasputin by Douglas Smith

This is the best of all Grigory Rasputin’s biographies, and there are quite a few. For most, he was Satan embodied — a greedy, lustful, immoral destroyer of the Romanov dynasty. For others, he was a heavenly mystic, a victim of slander and treachery. Smith shows him as neither a devil nor a saint, just a human being.

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

I was working on a novel where Stalin pops up. I needed to understand his inner mechanics. This book gave me a hint: The key word is solipsist — someone for whom the only reality is his own existence.

Anton Chekov: A Life by Donald Rayfield

I always respected Anton Pavlovich but never really liked him. This biography made me fall in love with him. I saw the evolution of a rude, vulgar, narrowminded youngster into a deep, all-understanding, prematurely wise person. And to think the man lived such a short life.

All the Kremlin’s Men by Mikhail Zygar

This was written by a young Russian journalist. It is unemotional, detached and explains quite persuasively why Russia has become what it is — a progeric state, only in its mid20s, but already showing signs of decrepitude.