Boris Pasternak's widely acclaimed novel comes gloriously to life in a magnificent new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the award-winning translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and to whom, The New York Review of Books declared, "the English-speaking world is indebted."
 
First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy-the novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, and Pasternak declined the Nobel Prize a year later under intense pressure from Soviet authorities-Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago's love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times.
 
Stunningly rendered in the spirit of Pasternak's original-resurrecting his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone-and including an introduction, textual annotations, and a translators' note, this edition of Doctor Zhivago is destined to become the definitive English translation of our time.

A poet, translator, and novelist, Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890. In 1958 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but, facing threats from Soviet authorities, refused the prize. He lived in virtual exile in an artists' community near Moscow until his death in 1960.
 
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are the award-winning translators of Tolstoy's War and Peace, among many other works of Russian literature. They are married and live in France.

From the acclaimed translators of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina," a stunning new translation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece, the first since the 1958 original.
Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, "Doctor Zhivago "is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Yuri Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds, and in love with the tender and beautiful nurse Lara.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky ("The English-speaking world is indebted to these two magnificent translators."--"The New York Review of Books) "have restored the rhythms, tone, precision, and poetry of Pasternak's original, bringing this classic of world literature gloriously to life for a new generation of readers.