Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak
Pasternak at the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934.
Born	Boris Leonidovich Pasternak 10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	30 May 1960(1960-05-30) (aged 70) Peredelkino, USSR
Occupation	Poet, writer
Nationality	Russian Empire (1890–1917) Soviet Russia (1917–1922) Soviet Union (1922–1960)
Ethnicity	Jewish
Notable works	My Sister, Life, The Second Birth, Doctor Zhivago
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1958)

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (/ˈpæstərˌnæk/;Russian: Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к; IPA: [bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak]) (10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Soviet Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russian, Pasternak's first book of poems, My Sister, Life (1917), is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Pasternak's translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderon and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences.

Outside Russia, Pasternak is best known as the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the First World War. Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957 and distributed with the help of the CIA in the rest of Europe. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize, though his descendants were later to accept it in his name in 1988.