Doctor Zhivago (novel)

Doctor Zhivago ( zhiv-AH-goh; Russian: До́ктор Жива́го [doktər ʐɨˈvaɡə]) is a novel by Russian poet, author and composer Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.

Owing to the author's critical stance on the October Revolution, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year, an event that embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006. The novel Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003, where it is read in 11th grade.

Plot summary

The plot of Doctor Zhivago is long and intricate; it can be difficult to follow for two reasons. Firstly, Pasternak employs many characters, who interact with each other throughout the book in unpredictable ways. Secondly, as is common in narrative Russian literature, he frequently introduces a character by one of his/her three names, then subsequently refers to that character by another of the three names or a nickname, without expressly stating that he is referring to the same character.

Part 1

The novel opens in Imperial Russia, 1902, during a Russian Orthodox funeral liturgy, or panikhida, for Yuri's mother, Marya Nikolaevna Zhivago. Having long ago been abandoned by his father, Yuri is taken in by his maternal uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin, a philosopher and former Orthodox priest who now works for the publisher of a progressive newspaper in a provincial capital on the Volga River.