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The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago
by Anna Pasternak
The heartbreaking story of the love affair between Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, and Olga Ivinskaya - the true tragedy behind the timeless classic.
When Stalin came into power in 1924, the Communist government began persecuting dissident writers. Though Stalin spared the life of Boris Pasternak - whose novel-in-progress, Doctor Zhivago, was suspected of being anti-Soviet - he persecuted Boris's mistress, typist, and literary muse, Olga Ivinskaya. Boris's affair with Olga devastated the straitlaced Pasternaks, and they were keen to disavow Olga's role in Boris's writing process. Twice Olga was sentenced to work in Siberian labor camps, where she was interrogated about the book Boris was writing, but she refused to betray the man she loved. When Olga was released from the gulags, she assumed that Boris would leave his wife for her but, trapped by his family's expectations and his own weak will, he never did.
Drawing on previously neglected family sources and original interviews, Anna Pasternak explores this hidden act of moral compromise by her great-uncle, and restores to history the passionate affair that inspired and animated Doctor Zhivago. Devastated that Olga suffered on his behalf and frustrated that he could not match her loyalty to him, Boris instead channeled his thwarted passion for Olga into the love story in Doctor Zhivago.
Filled with the rich detail of Boris's secret life, Lara unearths a moving love story of courage, loyalty, suffering, drama, and loss, and casts a new light on the legacy of Doctor Zhivago.
"A sympathetic portrait of a woman who saw her lover in the same "heroic light" as he saw himself." - Kirkus
"Pasternak doesn't always convey the larger historical context, but nonetheless this is a sensitive and fairly careful account of one of literature's great backstories." - Publishers Weekly
"An enchanting love story, wonderfully told." - Sir Ronald Harwood
"[A] profoundly moving meditation on love, loyalty and, ultimately, forgiveness." - Amanda Foreman
"[Lara] is a story with enough romance and suffering to make a moving novel or film in its own right." - The Guardian
"Lara is a marvellously interesting book in which the author makes a convincing case for Olga as Pasternak's great love, literary support, and at least a partial model for the heroine of Doctor Zhivago." - The Spectator, Sofka Zinovieff
This information about Lara was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anna Pasternak is an author, columnist, and journalist. She writes regularly for Sunday Times Style, Condé Nast Traveler, Harper's Bazaar, and others. She lives in Oxfordshire, England, with her husband and daughter.
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