Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago, a 1957 novel by Boris Pasternak, was first published in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian Empire and Soviet poet, novelist, and literary translator. This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller. Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel. Paperback Rare Copy, Circ. 1960s Signet J7197 Very good condition. All pages unmarked, Some rubbing and slight discoloration to edge of back cover near spine.