No anniversary, no event coming up to make us want to read and discuss this book by Boris Pasternak - just the fact that it is (in my opinion) great literature. Lola and Olga suggested the title and Lola is going to moderate the event.
On the 50th anniversary a new translation into English came out and the Guardian wrote this:
„Pasternak was the first writer of the Soviet regime who dared convey the truth about Russia's recent history. In the space of 40 years the Russians of his generation suffered two world wars; three revolutions; civil war and famine; the disasters of collectivisation and famine; the purges of the intelligentsia, the military, the Soviet political elite and the kulaks. Starvation, cannibalism, murder, reprisals, legitimised slaughter – nothing is glossed over in the novel's unflinching particularity. It ends with Khruschev's Thaw, tentatively celebrating "a new freedom of spirit" embodied in the book Zhivago wrote before his death.
Pasternak's hopes were denied when the forthcoming Russian edition of Zhivago was withdrawn from the Soviet press. In 1958 its publication in the west coincided with the Nobel prize, awarded for Pasternak's poetic achievements and his work "in the great Russian epic tradition", clearly linking Doctor Zhivago to Tolstoy's War and Peace. The Soviet response was to denounce Pasternak as a traitor. He was expelled from the writers' union, robbed of his livelihood and vilified in the press. He refused to seek exile in the west, and declined the Nobel prize. Within two years he was dead.
(…) Now we have the opportunity to reread – and reassess – his novel in a new translation.“
You can listen to the audio version of the novel on Spotify (if you have Premium you have already paid for the 20 to 25 hours of it).
Want to know more about the book and the East/West controversy about it before you decide wether to commit?
Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/books/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-nobel-prize.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Nk8.5hy5.0__IDy_IBjmr&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
