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John Yorke examines Victor Nekrasov’s novel Kira Georgievna, a bestseller in 1960s Russia.

Set in Moscow, Kyiv and rural Ukraine, the eponymous Kira Georgievna is a successful middle-aged sculptor, originally from Kyiv, who must choose between three different lovers. She’s married to a much older painter while also enjoying a casual affair with a young man who’s working for her as a model. But Kira’s comfortable life is about to be turned upside down when her first love - Vadim - returns from two decades as a political prisoner in the Siberian gulags.

As John digs deeper into the novel, he discovers that it is a powerful critique of the Soviet regime, and the choices made by the people who played the Soviet system, and those who stood up to it.

Viktor Nekrasov was born into a middle-class Russian family in Kyiv, and the tensions between Russian and Ukraine in Kira Georgievna foreshadow the terrible situation today. He was seriously injured twice fighting for the Soviet army against the Nazis, and his first novel was a vivid description of the misery of the life he had experienced first-hand in the trenches at Stalingrad. His early books were approved of and promoted by the Soviets but Kira Georgievna, published in 1961, marked the turning point when Nekrasov started to break away from the regime.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:
Ming Ho, writer and adapter of Kira Georgievna for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
Dr Uilleam Blacker, Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London
Reading by Ming Ho

Kira Georgievna by Victor Nekrasov, Pantheon Books, New York 1962, translated from the Russian by Walter N. Vickery

Produced by Jane Greenwood
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Sound by Sean Kerwin
Research by Nina Semple
Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sounds

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