Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with cruel experience of the new order and the changes it has wrought in him, and is torn between love for his wife and family, and the passionate, beautiful Lara.
Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago was nonetheless published covertly in Russian by the CIA and translated into many languages. In 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.