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Books

Sexual tension and Siberian magic mushrooms

Charlotte Hobson’s promising debut novel explores the Russian avant-garde scene through the eyes of an English governess on the eve of the first world war

28 May 2016

9:00 AM

28 May 2016

9:00 AM

The Vanishing Futurist Charlotte Hobson

Faber & Faber, pp.320, £16.99, ISBN: 9780571234868

On her arrival in Russia in 1914, Gerty Freely finds it refreshingly liberal compared to her native Britain: here servants are treated well, parents encourage self-expression in children, poor students are given support, and intellectual discourse flourishes. Gerty comes to Moscow as the governess to a rich aristocratic family and stays through the war, the revolutions and the Red Terror.

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