The Vanishing Futurist

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The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson: Episode 3

The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson, Episode 3

By Charlotte Hobson. The Kobelevs leave but Gerty stays in Moscow.

By Charlotte Hobson. While the Kobelevs leave Moscow, Gerty and Slavkin remain at the house on Gagarinsky Lane.

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.”

Episode Three
While the Kobelevs leave Moscow, Gerty and Slavkin remain at the house on Gagarinsky Lane.

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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