Name: Doctor Zhivago
Author: Boris Pasternak
ISBN: 9781636379944

Título: Doctor Zhivago

Sinopse: Doctor Zhivago 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 World War II.

Owing to the author's 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 that 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 novel Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003, where it is read in 11th grade.

Edmund Wilson wrote of the novel: "Doctor Zhivago will, I believe, come to stand as one of the great events in man's literary and moral history". V. S. Pritchett wrote in the New Statesman that the novel is "[t]he first work of genius to come out of Russia since the revolution." When the novel came out in Italian, Anders Österling, the then permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote in January 1958: "A strong patriotic accent comes through, but with no trace of empty propaganda... With its abundant documentation, its intense local color and its psychological frankness, this work bears convincing witness to the fact that the creative faculty in literature is in no sense extinct in Russia. It is hard to believe that the Soviet authorities might seriously envisage forbidding its publication in the land of its birth." Some literary critics "found that there was no real plot to the novel, that its chronology was confused, that the main characters were oddly effaced, that the author relied far too much on contrived coincidences." Vladimir Nabokov, who had celebrated Pasternak's books of poetry as works of "pure, unbridled genius", however, considered the novel to be "a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelievable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences." On the other hand, some critics praised it for being things that, in the opinion of translator Richard Pevear, it was never meant to be: a moving love story, or a lyrical biography of a poet in which the individual is set against the grim realities of Soviet life. Pasternak defended the numerous coincidences in the plot, saying that they are "traits to characterize that somewhat willful, free, fanciful flow of reality." In response to criticism in the West of his novel's characters and coincidences, Pasternak wrote to Stephen Spender:
Whatever the cause, reality has been for me like a sudden, unexpected arrival that is intensely welcome. I have always tried to reproduce this sense of being sent, of being launched... there is an effort in my novels to represent the whole sequence (facts, beings, happenings) as a great moving entity... a developing, passing, rolling, rushing inspiration. As if reality itself had freedom of choice... Hence the reproach that my characters were insufficiently realized. Rather than delineate, I was trying to efface them. Hence the frank arbitrariness of the "coincidences." Here I wanted to show the unrestrained freedom of life, its very verisimilitude contiguous with improbability. (wikipedia.org)

Contexto da obra

Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Doctor Zhivago”, de Boris Pasternak, publicado pela editora Bibliotech Press, em 2022 e com 384 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.

Editora: Bibliotech Press

Páginas: 384

Ano: 2022

Edição:

Linguagem: en

ISBN: 163637994X

ISBN13: 9781636379944

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Sobre o autor

Ler os livros de BORIS PASTERNAK é mergulhar em narrativas densas que equilibram o épico e o íntimo, onde a história pessoal se entrelaça com os grandes eventos da Revolução Russa e suas consequências. A prosa traz um ritmo que ora se faz contemplativo, refletindo sobre o destino dos indivíduos em meio ao caos, ora se acelera com a tensão das batalhas e conflitos políticos. O foco emocional está na luta entre o amor e a obrigação, a esperança e a desilusão, especialmente através de personagens que vivem intensamente suas dúvidas e paixões. A leitura oferece uma experiência marcada pela complexidade dos sentimentos humanos diante de transformações sociais profundas, com uma construção de personagens que revela hesitações e resistências. O contraste entre o mundo externo turbulento e o universo interno dos protagonistas cria uma tensão constante que prende o leitor. Em meio a isso, os livros de BORIS PASTERNAK convidam a refletir sobre a condição humana sob regimes opressivos e o papel da arte como ato de resistência.

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Sobre a editora

Os livros da editora Bibliotech Press trazem uma experiência de leitura marcada por narrativas que transitam entre a vivência pessoal e o contexto histórico, muitas vezes explorando conflitos sociais e psicológicos. O catálogo sugere uma preferência por obras que combinam relatos autobiográficos ou de forte imersão, como vivências na margem social, com romances que apresentam múltiplas perspectivas narrativas e ambientações variadas, do século XVIII ao século XX. Há uma atenção ao detalhe histórico e à complexidade dos personagens, o que cria um tom que pode ser tanto reflexivo quanto tenso, dependendo da obra. A diversidade do catálogo permite encontrar tanto textos mais densos e introspectivos quanto outros com ritmo mais narrativo e envolvente.

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