Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is a classic Russian romance novel set in the early twentieth century.

Summary of the Book

A Russian poet, physician and philosopher, Dr. Zhivago finds his life torn by his love for a revolutionary’s wife and by the war. He feels personal pain for the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, showcasing his pain through his poems. He struggles under the paranoia and claustrophobia rampant at the time, and under his feelings for Lara. Written under circumstances similar to those it portrays, this novel won the Nobel Prize for Literature for Pasternak, who was forced to decline it under threat to his own life from the totalitarian Stalin regime.

About Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak was a Russian novelist and poet. He was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Doctor Zhivago was adapted into a hit film starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin. The film won 5 Academy Awards and was nominated for 5 others.