Doctor Zhivago
- Authors
- Pasternak, Boris
- Publisher
- Pantheon
- Tags
- classics , war , historical , historical fiction , love stories , general , soviet union - history - revolution; 1917-1921 , literary , unread , russia , soviet union , political fiction , fiction , world war; 1914-1918 , literary criticism , epic literature , russian & former soviet union , political , man-woman relationships , romance
- ISBN
- 9780679774389
- Date
- 1957-11-01T00:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 0.51 MB
- Lang
- en
This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller.
Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.