topics: |  fiction | russia | nobel-1958

Now, what is history? Its beginning is that of centuries of systematic work
devoted to the solution of the enigma of death,
so that death itself may ultimately be overcome. - p.18

Publication history

Although some passages in the book were written in the 1910s and 1920s,
Doctor Zhivago was not completed until 1956. It was submitted for
publication to the journal Novy mir, but was rejected because the author,
like Dr Zhivago, appeared more concerned with the welfare of individuals
than with the welfare of society, and Soviet censors construed passages as
anti-Marxist. There are implied critiques of Stalinism and references to
prison camps. In 1957, the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
smuggled the manuscript from the Soviet Union and simultaneously
published editions in both Russian and Italian in Milan, Italy. This
English version,  translated from the Russian by Ehud Harari and Max
Hayward, came out the following year.   That very year Pasternak was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

The award created intense pressure on Pasternak, and he was threatened at
the very least with expulsion. However, it appears that Jawaharlal Nehru
then Prime Minister of India, may have spoken with Khrushchev about this,
and Pasternak was not exiled or imprisoned. (see excerpts from intro in
Selected Poems by France and Stallworthy.