Doctor Zhivago

One of the 20th century's must-read novels: a love story set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, told in prose so lyrical it is on the brink of becoming poetry.

TRANSLATED BY MAX HAYWARD AND MANYA HARARI

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.

Yuri Zhivago, poet and physician, lives through revolution, civil war and a love that defies history.

Yuri Zhivago first encounters Lara Antipova in Moscow in the early twentieth century, where chance meetings slowly grow into an attachment neither fully understands.

As the Russian Revolution and Civil War divide Russia, their lives are pulled apart by marriage, duty, and political upheaval. Yet each separation only deepens the hold they have on one another.

Years later, in remote towns and snowbound houses in the Ural Mountains, they meet again, clinging to stolen hours of tenderness while armies advance and loyalties shift. Around them, the struggle between the Whites and the Reds reshapes the country, but their private devotion refuses to fade, even as war threatens everything they have left.