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Dr. Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak
A beautiful classic about life, love and the Russian Revolution
Yury Zhivago, a young Russian, was raised by his uncle Kolya after his mother died when he was a boy. When he is eighteen, he enrolls at the university in Moscow to study medicine. While Yury is attending school, he meets Tonya, who he eventually marries and has a son with.
When Yury becomes a medical officer in the army, he is stationed in a small town where he meets Lara while visiting the house of her mother, who attempted suicide. He doesn’t speak with her, but instead sees her exchanging glances with an older man named Komarovsky. The second time he sees Lara, she tries to shoot Komarovsky at a party but mistakenly wounds someone else. We find out that Lara is married to a young soldier named Pasha, who is missing and she has been searching for. She left her daughter, Katya, back home while continuing her search. Yury becomes enamored with Lara, but must return to his wife and son back in Moscow. After they move to another city, Yury runs into Lara again and they begin a two-month long affair. He then decides to end it and confess to his wife, but before he can, he is kidnapped by the partisan army. He is forced to remain until the war between the Tsarist Whites and the Communist Reds ends, and once released, he returns to Lara.
Forced to witness the horrors of war, Yury remains torn between these two women while he struggles to make sense of the world in which he lives. Lara is eventually taken from him once again, and so is his family once they are exiled. His life continues to be difficult until he dies of a heart attack.
Published in 1957, Dr. Zhivago is set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Primarily dealing with the destruction and violence of war, it also paints the struggle of a man torn between two loves. The novel was famously adapted in a 1965 film that was hugely successful, winning several Oscars.
Title: Dr. Zhivago
Author: Boris Pasternak
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0679774386
Review written by: Jennifer Kneisley
Reviewer's Rating:10
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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