Product Description

"Doctor Zhivago" is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with the new order and confronts the changes cruel experience has made in him and the anguish of being torn between the love of two women.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33062 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

The Times
`clearly a novel by a poet, occasionally messy, sometimes clumsy...yet somehow vastly greater than the sum of its parts'.

About the Author
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890. His first two ebullient collections of poetry, A Twin in the Clouds and Above the Barriers appeared in 1912 and 1917 respectively. But it was not until 1922, with the appearance of My Sister, Life that he triumphantly achieved his own distinctive voice. He was married in 1921, and again in 1934, and lived most of his life in Moscow. In the twenties and thirties he began writing fiction, including The Childhood of Luvers and The Last Summer, as well as attempting more epic poetry in an effort to stay in touch with the literary requirements of the new regime. The results included Nineteen Five, Lieutenant Schmidt and Spetorsky. At about this time, he began translating European literature into Russian; his translations of Shakespeare and Goethe are regarded as masterpieces of the translator's art. Second Birth, published in 1932, appeared to mark a new beginning. However, it was not until the early forties that this truly came about. The clear, restrained, but still evocative style of On Early Trains would serve him well for his last works: Poems 1955-1959, An Essay in Autobiography and his masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 but, after a savage campaign of denunciation, was forced to renounce the award. He died on 30 May 1960.

Customer Reviews

Not the Russian classic it's professed to be
As a huge fan and avid reader of Russian literature I was mildly dissapointed with this Novel. I knew upon the undertaking that it is not considered a particularly literary work like those of Bulgakov or Dostoevsky and as such read it for the story and portrait of a nation in turmoil. Unfortunately it wasn't the masterwork it could have been. It's a good book, but there are huge faults.

Yury's character is badly drawn, the love story is relatively minor component of the book and is a deeply unsatisfying plot line. This could be because love story took a backseat to the revolution and family ordeal on which the novel focuses. If so, the plotting is loose and none of the many threads provide a strong enough story to call this a masterpiece.

No doubt this novel has merit but I would suggest other russian novels over this any day. For fiecely good writing about the russian state read Bulgakov or solzhenitsyn or any of the many good history books about the revolution.

O.

A Stunning Masterpiece
This is one of the very best novels I have ever read. This part menage-a-quatre, part lives of many in their spring through autumn times, part tragedy, part political commentary in revolutionary Russia is a tale that is marvelous in its telling. The handling of every subject from politics (Pasternak's score card on bolshevism and socialism in practice is unmistakable) to romance to war to upheavals in the daily lives of the characters is assured and masterful. The pace is living just like real life. There's no need to hollywood-ify the story through unnecessary and tacky raciness. This is not a Brangelina movie nor a John Grisham novel but just the sort of thing that can and may happen to you and me. The pace is fitting and the story is gripping from start to finish. The criticism of some reviewers of dullness is astonishing.

The prophets of positive thinking might preach you make your own luck but we all wink and guffaw because deep down in that inward place where reason meets instinct we know that chance creates its own existential experience. If for example you fall in love you do so whether with the right or wrong person and that's that. Likewise if you get caught up in a war not of your own making well life takes no prisoners and you suffer deprivations like everyone else and you make the best of it. That is what is so moving about this novel - how the characters take on life as it is and do their best and their best does not always come up to scratch. We sometimes today forget our humanity and that our proud egos are only set in a sea of earthy vulnerability. Pasternak's novel leaves the raw taste of life on your tongue and you come away with the piquant pungent taste of reality.

The characters are rich, the phrasing is inventive and the detailing of events, places and ambience throughout the book is evocative and visceral. The writing is superb. This is the sort of book that nobel prizes should be created for. A prize book and put simply a stunning masterpiece.

A Tale of Life.Love and Destruction
This Russian classic begins in 1901 and takes us through the dying years of Tsarist Empire and through the unspeakable horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution and the resultant Civil War and then into the hideous totalitarian regimes of Lenin and Stalin
It is not a political novel but rather a human drama but anyone honestly writing about events during this time cannot fail to depict how the cruelty of these times ( unknown prior to the 20th century ) destroyed lives and love, all that is noble and good and compassionate .

It focuses on Dr Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago and several friends and associates of his including his loyal and strong wife Tonya, the beautiful and mystifying Laryssa Fyodorovna (Lara),her shy and gentle husband Pasha who later reappears as the terrible Red Army officer Strenikov
And Yuri's two close friends Misha Gordon and Nicky Dudorov

Zhivago -disgusted by the poverty and injustices of Tsarist Russia - initially supports the high ideals of the Bolsheviks but after their bloody seizure of power it soon becomes clearer and clearer that the Bolsheviks are far and away crueler and more steeped in hypocrisy than even the worst elements of the Tsarist order

Later in the book he is forced to ask himself "Was it possible that he must pay for that one moment of rash enthusiasm all his life hearing ,year after year , anything but these unchanging , shrill , crazy exclamations and demands , even more lifeless , meaningless and unfulfillable as time went by? Was it possible that in one short moment of over-sensitive generosity he had allowed himslef to be enslaved for ever"

The Civil War of 1918 - 1920 sees unimaginable horrors from which previous terrible tribulations of long suffering Russia such as the invasion by Napoleon in 1812 (depicted by another great Russian epic) and the recent First World War pale into incomparison.)

Misery and terror are spread into every corner of Russia and nobody is spared

While staying in a village on the steppes with his wife and family Yuri once more meets up with Lara whom he had known from his past

The love of Yuri and Lara is one of the great romances of literature like that of Romeo and Juliet ,Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights , and Lancelot and Guinevere

Lara describes it a something ordained by the very forces of nature but at the same time something predestined to be destroyed

He sends a few brief , ecstatic but fearful months with her after the Civil War but hey are again cruelly separated. By this time Yuri's wife Tonya and their children have gone into exile

Slowly the key characters in the novel disappear one by one until the two main characters of the novel Yuri and Lara are themselves devoured by the cruel , pitiless and wolfish revolution

All that has beautiful seems to have been destroyed but we are then again reminded how life and all that is good continues to sustain itself ,through hope everlasting, against all that is cruel and evil and ugly in this world