Doctor Zhivago | Doctor Zhivago Introduction
In the following chapter excerpt, Rudova offers a general introduction to the novel and gives an overview of its historical context.
On 23 October 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for "important achievements both in contemporary lyric poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition" (Conquest 1966, 85). But the award was not altogether a happy event in Pasternak’s life because his joy and pride at receiving this high honor were overshadowed by the expectation of imminent trouble with the Soviet authorities and subsequent personal and professional isolation. In his conversation with Max Frankel, the New York Times correspondent in Moscow at the time, Pasternak expressed his...
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