Doctor Zhivago

Introduction by Robbie

Doctor Zhivago was the fifth book in the reading sequence, begun in April 2023 after Vanity Fair. After three Victorian novels in a row, this was a return to Russia — but a very different Russia from Tolstoy's. Pasternak's great novel of revolution, love, and poetry spans the upheavals of the early twentieth century.

The novel is structured across seventeen parts, and the reading ran from April through August 2023. Pasternak's prose has a lyrical, almost musical quality that makes it particularly affecting when read aloud — sweeping and intimate at the same time.

There is a particular resonance in reading Pasternak to one's mother. This is a novel about what endures when everything else is swept away — memory, love, the stubborn persistence of beauty in the midst of upheaval.