Doctor Zhivago (novel)

Doctor Zhivago

First Russian edition cover
Author	Boris Pasternak
Original title	Доктор Живаго
Country	Italy
Language	Russian
Genre	Historical, Romantic novel
Publisher	Feltrinelli (first edition), Pantheon Books
Publication date	1957
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	592 (Pantheon)
ISBN	(Pantheon)

Doctor Zhivago (Russian: До́ктор Жива́го, Doktor Zhivago Russian pronunciation: [ˈdoktər ʐɨˈvaɡə]) is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 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 the Civil War.

Due to its independent minded stance on the October Revolution, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event which embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006.

The plot of Doctor Zhivago is long and intricate. It can be difficult to follow for two main reasons: first, Pasternak employs many characters, who interact with each other throughout the book in unpredictable ways, and second, he frequently introduces a character by one of his/her three names, then subsequently refers to that character by another of the three names or a nickname, without expressly stating that he is referring to the same character. To avoid this confusion, the summary below uses a character's full name when the character is first introduced.