Doctor Zhivago

Yuri Zhivago, poet and physician, lives through revolution, civil war and a love that defies history. Yuri Zhivago first encounters Lara Antipova in Moscow in the early twentieth century, where chance meetings slowly grow into an attachment neither fully understands. As the Russian Revolution and Civil War divide Russia, their lives are pulled apart by marriage, duty, and political upheaval. Yet each separation only deepens the hold they have on one another. Years later, in remote towns and snowbound houses in the Ural Mountains, they meet again, clinging to stolen hours of tenderness while armies advance and loyalties shift. Around them, the struggle between the Whites and the Reds reshapes the country, but their private devotion refuses to fade, even as war threatens everything they have left.

Yuri Zhivago, poet and physician, lives through revolution, civil war and a love that defies history. Yuri Zhivago first encounters Lara Antipova in Moscow in the early twentieth century, where chance meetings slowly grow into an attachment neither fully understands. As the Russian Revolution and Civil War divide Russia, their lives are pulled apart by marriage, duty, and political upheaval. Yet each separation only deepens the hold they have on one another. Years later, in remote towns and snowbound houses in the Ural Mountains, they meet again, clinging to stolen hours of tenderness while armies advance and loyalties shift. Around them, the struggle between the Whites and the Reds reshapes the country, but their private devotion refuses to fade, even as war threatens everything they have left.

Yuri Zhivago, poet and physician, lives through revolution, civil war and a love that defies history. Yuri Zhivago first encounters Lara Antipova in Moscow in the early twentieth century, where chance meetings slowly grow into an attachment neither fully understands. As the Russian Revolution and Civil War divide Russia, their lives are pulled apart by marriage, duty, and political upheaval. Yet each separation only deepens the hold they have on one another. Years later, in remote towns and snowbound houses in the Ural Mountains, they meet again, clinging to stolen hours of tenderness while armies advance and loyalties shift. Around them, the struggle between the Whites and the Reds reshapes the country, but their private devotion refuses to fade, even as war threatens everything they have left.

Yuri Zhivago, poet and physician, lives through revolution, civil war and a love that defies history. Yuri Zhivago first encounters Lara Antipova in Moscow in the early twentieth century, where chance meetings slowly grow into an attachment neither fully understands. As the Russian Revolution and Civil War divide Russia, their lives are pulled apart by marriage, duty, and political upheaval. Yet each separation only deepens the hold they have on one another. Years later, in remote towns and snowbound houses in the Ural Mountains, they meet again, clinging to stolen hours of tenderness while armies advance and loyalties shift. Around them, the struggle between the Whites and the Reds reshapes the country, but their private devotion refuses to fade, even as war threatens everything they have left.

First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy, Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara, the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times. Pevear and Volokhonsky masterfully restore the spirit of Pasternak's original--his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone--in this beautiful translation of a classic of world literature.