Later there appeared a first-hand account of the siege of Port Arthur by Alexander Stepanov (1892–1965). He had been present there as the 12-year-old son of a battery commander and his novel, "Port Arthur: a historical narrative" (1944), is based on his own diaries and his father's notes. The work is considered one of the best historical novels of the Soviet period. A later novel in which the war appears is Valentin Pikul's "The Three Ages of Okini-San" (1981). Centred on the life of Vladimir Kokovtsov, who rose through the ranks to admiral of the Russian fleet, it covers the period from the Russo-Japanese War through to the February and October Revolutions. A much later Russian genre novel uses the period of the war as background. This is Boris Akunin's "The Diamond Chariot" (2003), in the first part of which the detective Erast Fandorin is charged with protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage.