Doctor Zhivago (vintage Classic Russians Series)

The first work of genius to come out of Russia since the Revolution – V.S. PritchettThe English-speaking world is indebted to these two magnificent translators * New York Review of Books *One of the great events in man’s literary and moral history – Edmund WilsonBelongs to that small group of novels by which all others are ultimately judged – Frank Kermode * Spectator *Not since Shakespeare has love been so fully, vividly, scrupulously and directly communicated – Isaiah Berlin * Sunday Times *

Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890 and after briefly training as a composer resolved to be a writer. He published a large number of collections of poetry, written under the burden of Soviet Russia’s stringent censorship, before publishing his most famous work, Dr Zhivago, in 1958. This novel won him the Nobel Prize for Literature but the USSR’s hostility to the West meant he was forced to turn it down. He died in 1960.