Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak completed the manuscript of Doctor Zhivago in 1956 after decades of writing primarily poetry and literary translations (including Shakespeare, Goethe, Verlaine, and Rilke) during Joseph Stalin's rule. Soviet literary journals and state authorities rejected the manuscript in 1956 because its depiction of the 1917 Russian Revolution and Soviet life diverged from mandated socialist realism. A smuggled manuscript reached Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who published the first edition in Milan in 1957 despite Soviet pressure to halt publication. The narrative spans the period from the 1905 Russian Revolution through World War I, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and into World War II. The novel centers on Dr. Yury Zhivago, a physician, poet, and philosopher who serves as Pasternak's alter ego, caught between his marriage to Tonya and his passionate love for Lara Antipova. Structurally, the book integrates a sweeping prose chronicle with a concluding cycle of 25 poems attributed to Yury Zhivago, uniting lyric poetry and historical epic.