Doctor Zhivago (Famous Name, Well-Known Translation, Illustrated Edition)

Author: Boris Pasternak (Russia)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Yuri Zhivago is the son of a wealthy Siberian businessman but was abandoned by his father at a very young age. Orphaned at the age of 10 after his mother's death, he was sent to live with his uncle in the home of Professor Gromeko in Moscow. The professor and his family treated him kindly, allowing him to be educated alongside his daughter, Tonya. After graduating from medical school, Zhivago became a surgeon and married Tonya.
When World War I broke out, Zhivago was drafted into the army and worked in a field hospital on the front lines. After the October Revolution, he returned to Moscow from the front. He celebrated the birth of the Soviet regime: "What a brilliant surgical operation! The foul old wound of injustice was skillfully excised in one stroke! A verdict was passed on a century of injustice—such a feat in history, a miracle!" However, life in post-revolutionary Moscow was extremely difficult, and the Zhivago family was on the brink of starvation. Zhivago himself contracted typhoid fever. At this time, his half-brother, Evgraf Zhivago, persuaded the family to move to the Ural Mountains, where at least they wouldn't starve.
In April 1918, the Zhivago family set off for Varykino Village, the estate of Tonya's maternal grandfather. While life there was sustainable, Zhivago felt stifled. He could neither practice medicine nor write. He often visited the library in the nearby city of Yuriatin to read. There, he met his lover, Lara. Lara had come to Yuriatin with her husband, Basha Anpilov.