A Book - A Place: Geneva cover art

A Book - A Place: Geneva

A Book - A Place: Geneva

By: Robin Pomeroy
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About this listen

 Part history podcast, part travel guide, always a great story.

A Book - A Place: Geneva takes you to unexpected places in an often city that has a unique place in history.

Frankenstein and comic books were born here. Revolutionaries plotted. An enlightenment superstar had good reason to have houses in and just outside Geneva. And science fiction fans became real scientists at the home of the world's greatest experiment.

Whether you're a visitor, a newcomer, or a long-time resident, this podcast will take you to corners of the city where history was (and is still being) made.Robin Pomeroy 2024 Art Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary World
Episodes
  • Ep. 5 Angels and Demons and CERN

    Ep. 5 Angels and Demons and CERN
    Sep 13 2025
    A scientist at CERN, the research centre that straddles the French and Swiss border, is murdered in grisly and mysterious circumstances, launching a race against the clock to prevent a much bigger crime. As in The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown constructs a pacy thriller that touches on history, theology and God. The book is Angels and Demons.

    As Dan Brown publishes the next installment of the adventures of 'symbologist' Robert Langdon in The Secret of Secrets, this podcast goes back to where the story began - Geneva. The place is CERN.

    In the podcast we meet a young scientist inspired to work at CERN when she read the novel, and discover a book of short stories based on the real science that searches for the secrets of the universe.

    Episode page: https://bit.ly/4n1ByfX

    abookaplace.com

    Part book club, part travel guide, part history podcast, A Book - A Place: Geneva takes you to the places behind the stories that made the city.
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Ep. 4 Conrad, Lenin and revolutionary Geneva

    Ep. 4 Conrad, Lenin and revolutionary Geneva
    Aug 29 2025
    Best know for Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad set his spy thriller Under Western Eyes in Geneva, not only because it was a city in which he had lived, but because at that time, in the early 20th century, it was a hotbed of revolutionary Russian emigrés plotting the downfall of the monarchy and the imposition of communism.

    This episode takes you to the Geneva library where Vladimir Lenin studied and wrote, leaving his own annotations in books - including a biography of Jesus, a historical figure that the father of the Russian revolution saw as a social radical.

    For all books and places mentioned in the podcast, visit abookaplace.com

    Part book club, part travel guide, part history podcast, A Book - A Place: Geneva takes you to the places behind the stories that made the city.
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    59 mins
  • Ep. 3 Voltaire's Candide: the best of all possible satires

    Ep. 3 Voltaire's Candide: the best of all possible satires
    Aug 10 2025
    Voltaire is literally in the pantheon of France's greatest literary heroes. But in his lifetime, the unconventional writer-philosopher was shunned by his home country and lived much of his life in exile - the last two decades in - and importantly - just outside Geneva.

    And it is here that he wrote his most enduring work: Candide, the story of an ingenue who travels the world and suffers the worst cruelties of humanity and nature, clinging to the cod philosophy that "all is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds".

    This episode takes you to the house in Geneva where he wrote the novel, and to the chateau just over the border in France in a village that now bears his name, Ferney-Voltaire.

    More details on the episode, and the sources cited in it, are available on the episode page http://bit.ly/46JI9Xc at www.abookaplace.com.

    Watch a version of this episode with pictures at https://www.youtube.com/@abookaplace

    Part book club, part travel guide, part history podcast, A Book - A Place: Geneva takes you to the places behind the stories that made the city.
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    47 mins
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