Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War, the narrative follows Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet who struggles to maintain his medical ethics and artistic integrity amidst social collapse. As the old Tsarist order dissolves into Bolshevik rule, Zhivago is caught between his commitment to his wife, Tonya, and his intense connection to Lara Antipova, a woman displaced by the same political tides. The story tracks his forced conscription into a partisan medical unit, his desertion, and his eventual decline in Moscow, documenting the systematic destruction of the private individual by a collective state ideology.
Readers of historical fiction and Russian literature choose this book to observe how large-scale political upheaval fractures domestic life and personal morality. It appeals to those interested in the friction between state-mandated narratives and the internal reality of the creative mind. The reader walks away with a detailed portrait of early twentieth-century Russian history and an understanding of how individual identity persists or withers when subjected to total war and revolutionary scrutiny.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Mindful Reader. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1957
- Language
- EN
