Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak · 1890–1960 · Russia
Originally Doctor Zhivago (Russian)
Why it matters
A poet-physician carried by revolution, civil war, and a love called Lara: the individual soul asserted against history's machinery. Smuggled to the West, it won a Nobel the Soviet state forced Pasternak to refuse.
At a glance
historical fictionwar novelromance
Difficulty 6/10slow pace592 pagesSprawling coincidence-driven plot, large cast, and lyrical, sometimes elliptical prose.
Deep dive
Pasternak buries his real argument in a hundred pages of coincidence and a coda of poems — this dive traces why the poems, not the plot, are the novel's actual ending.
Where to go next
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