Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2017.
An exuberant, kaleidoscopic debut set in the turbulent times around the 1917 Russian revolution, told through the eyes of an eighty-year-old Englishwoman recalling her youth. It's 1914 and, against the wishes of her family, young Gerty Freely goes to Moscow to work as a governess for the middle class Kobelov family. She experiences the city as a place of “unexpected joyfulness” and remains even after Russia declares war on Germany. When the Kobelovs leave the city, Gerty stays, and the family home becomes the base of the Institute of Revolutionary Transformation, spearheaded by charismatic inventor Nikita Slavin. The commune’s manifesto declares war on The Private, The Old and The Ego, and the group cultivates its own utopia, with Slavin (in fabulously full-on mad scientist mode) working to perfect his Propaganda Machine, and then the Socialisation Capsule, a device he claims will enable comrades to time travel to a utopian version of Now. As the crumbling outer world encroaches on the commune, Slavin vanishes. The question is, did the authorities remove him, or did he disappear into another space and time?
Gerty is an immensely intriguing narrator, and her story is exhilaratingly original. Blending an extraordinary personal journey with fascinating, lightly worn historical detail, this is a triumph of a debut. ~ Joanne Owen
The Walter Scott Judges said:
‘Charlotte Hobson's The Vanishing Futurist fulfils the ultimate requirement of a historical novel: it inhabits a moment in history and in doing so illuminates recurring truths about the past, present and future. The moment in history is the Russian revolution and the avant-garde theories of community, art and science which it spawned. But the charismatic founder of a commune, and the evangelical zeal of its members, are recurring phenomena throughout history, from early Christian times to our own day. The narrator's voice, disciplined yet passionate, is a perfect vehicle for this fascinating novel, with its fast moving plot and characters who are so real that I found myself leafing through the book in the hope of finding their photographs.’
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
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