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A Terrible Country: Episode 2

Episode 1

Episode 2

A Terrible Country

BBC Radio 4 - A Terrible Country, Episode 2

Andrei gets to know his grandmother and meets some of his brother's friends.

At 33 years old, Andrei settles down to life in Moscow, sleeping in the bedroom he and his brother used to share as children. He meets some of his brother's friends at a party.

In the summer of 2008 as the global financial crisis erupts,  Andrei Kaplan moves from New York to Moscow to look after his ageing grandmother.

His older brother Dima has left the country in something of a hurry after his bid to run a network of gas stations on a new highway was rejected. It had been Dima who used to keep an eye on their grandmother but now, as Andrei once again fails to secure an academic job in the US, it falls to him to take his turn.

Baba Seva is approaching 90. She is a former professor who survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia's violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can't always remember who he is, and he in turn indulges her in endless games of anagrams, at which she excels.

Andrei learns to navigate Moscow, still the city of his birth but with more expensive cars and coffee. He finds a place to play hockey, a cafe to send emails from, and eventually some friends, including an attractive and serious young activist named Yulia. But he remains an innocent abroad, a young man with no experience of Putin's Russia or indeed of the real world beyond the petty grievances and feuds of academia. 

In Episode 2 Andrei tries sort out his grandmother's medical regime, but comes to realise that her patchy memory is a symptom of dementia. 

Written by Keith Gessen
Read by Trevor White
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4

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An academic leaves New York for his native Moscow to care for his ageing grandmother.

Keith Gessen's novel in which a struggling academic leaves New York for his native Moscow to care for his ageing grandmother.

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