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Doctor Zhivago
8Boris Pasternak
Pasternak's 1957 novel of a poet-physician through the Russian Revolution — the book he was forced by Soviet authorities to decline the Nobel Prize for; its smuggling out of Russia is a story in itself.
GBM Assessment (Score: 8/10)
Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958—which Pasternak was forced by Soviet authorities to decline—Doctor Zhivago renders the upheaval of the Russian Revolution through the lyrical consciousness of a poet-physician. The novel weaves intimate love and loss into the vast sweep of historical catastrophe, achieving a rare fusion of private feeling and public crisis that stands among the great achievements of twentieth-century Russian literature.
Smuggled out of the Soviet Union and first published in Italy in 1957, Doctor Zhivago became an international sensation and a pivotal episode in Cold War cultural politics. Its suppression at home and celebration abroad transformed a literary work into a symbol of artistic freedom, while the forced refusal of the Nobel Prize underscored the tensions between Soviet ideology and individual creative expression.
Cold War Culture, 1957-1958
Pasternak's Zhivago is smuggled from the USSR; he's forced to decline the Nobel. Achebe's Things Fall Apart founds African literature. Lampedusa's Leopard appears posthumously. Sputnik shocks the West. Castro enters Havana.
Awards & Adaptations
NOBEL 1958. Lean film (1965).
Recommended Edition
M. Hayward & M. Harari (1958)
