The Vanishing Futurist

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The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson: Episode 1

The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson, Episode 1

By Charlotte Hobson. Gerty travels to Moscow to become a governess.

By Charlotte Hobson. Early in 1914, young Gerty Freely travels from Cornwall to Moscow to become a governess with the Kobelev family.

By Charlotte Hobson. Early in 1914, 22-year-old Gerty Freely travels to Russia to work as a governess, little-knowing the huge upheavals in the world and in her own life that lie ahead.

In London, 1974, Gerty begins a memoir for her daughter Sophy, looking back at that extraordinary time of war, revolution and civil war. Most of her memories are centred on a young inventor, Nikita Slavkin, who mysteriously disappeared in 1919 and was subsequently celebrated in Soviet culture as The Vanishing Futurist.

“No word has been heard from him since […] Yet the idea persists that one day he will reappear.”

Charlotte Hobson graduated from Edinburgh University with a first in Russian. Thereafter she travelled widely in the former Soviet Union, working as an interpreter in the Caucasus, a translator, and dabbling in civil rights. Her book, Black Earth City (2002) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 2002. The Vanishing Futurist was published in 2016 - her first novel. Charlotte lives in Cornwall with her family.

Writer: Charlotte Hobson
Reader: Barbara Flynn
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Producer: Jeremy Osborne

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Early in 1914, young Gerty Freely travels from Cornwall to Russia to work as a governess.

Early in 1914, 22-year-old Gerty Freely travels from Cornwall to Russia to work as a governess, little knowing the huge upheavals in the world and in her own life that lie ahead.

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