So good! What is it about me and Russian authors? The writing is so beautiful. I have always wanted to read this book, having seen the Omar Sharif/Julie Christie version when I was a kid (and didn't understand it) and later as an adult. I also watched the Kiera Knightley series. Both are excellent, and the book is even better.
I cried at the end. Russia has been through so much. This is a sweeping epic from 1902 to World War II. I highly recommend it. When I found out that Pasternak was also a poet, it made sense! His prose is written almost like poetry!
Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:
Even though its artistic achievement was hailed upon its original publication in Italy in 1957, and its author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in the subsequent year, the true grandeur of Doctor Zhivago remains hidden for many by two factors: the shadow of Cold War politics surrounding its publication and the glamorous glow that still emanates from David Lean’s 1965 film. You should make no mistake about the rare reading experience Boris Pasternak’s novel offers: To get lost in its pages is to go beyond politics and glamour and encounter life itself in all its chaos and commotion, love and sorrow. On every page, Doctor Zhivago embraces the heedless rush of existence with an abandon at odds with the carefully calibrated artifice and ironic detachment of most modern fiction.
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