Dec 23, 2009

Doctor Zhivago | Critical Overview

Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1958, but he was forbidden by the Russian government from accepting it, and Doctor Zhivago was initially banned from Russia. Pasternak’s novel, however, won widespread acceptance and appreciation all over the world.

In his introduction to the 1991 edition of Doctor Zhivago, John Bayley attributes the great force of the novel to the “poetic power of the hero,” Yurii Zhivago, and to Pasternak’s skill in being “able to fill the book with that richness and minutiae of life which distinguish[es] a...