Charlotte Hobson

Charlotte Hobson
Born	Charlotte Adelaide Hobson 1970 [1]
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Spouse	Philip Marsden
Children	2

Charlotte Adelaide Hobson (born 1970) is an English writer. Her memoir Black Earth City (2002), which recounts living in Russia in the early 1990s, won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Biography

Hobson grew up in Southampton. She is of Russian heritage through her mother Tatyana (née Vinogradoff) and took local Russian lessons growing up. ^{[2] [3]} Following her mother's death from cancer, Hobson continued her Russian studies at Edinburgh University. ^[4] As part of her degree program, she spent a year abroad in the Russian city of Voronezh in 1991–1992.

Her experiences of living in Russia in the earliest phase of its post-Soviet transition became the subject of her travel memoir Black Earth City. The book won the Somerset Maugham Award, and was also nominated for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. It was reviewed by the NYT, The Guardian and the FT among others. ^[5] The book was reissued in 2017 by Faber and Faber with a foreword by Peter Pomerantsev. Hobson's second book, a novel called The Vanishing Future, appeared in 2016. ^[6]

She is married to the writer Philip Marsden. ^[4]

Bibliography

Books

• Black Earth City: When Russia Ran Wild (And So Did We) (2002)
• The Vanishing Future (2017)

Essays and shorts

• "Peter Truth" in Granta

References

1. Townsend, Lulu (11 March 2022). "Charlotte Hobson, heads to the border of Ukraine and Poland to be a translator to the refugees". Lulu's Luxury Lifestyle. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
2. "Black Earth City". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
3. "Life and love in a new Russia". The Washington Times. 10 February 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2024.
4. "Q&A with author Charlotte Hobson". May 27, 2016.
5. "Russian Pastoral (Published 2002)". July 14, 2002.
6. Taylor, Charlotte (4 May 2016). "The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson review – a carnival ride through revolutionary Russia". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 December 2024.