Welcome to week eight of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
In this eighth instalment of our sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago, the Zhivago family arrives in the Urals — a world apart from Moscow. We meet a cast of memorable new characters, including the lawyer Samdevyatov and the Mikulitsins, and follow the family's tense first encounter at Varykino. Along the way, we explore Gasparov's idea of temporal counterpoint, Pasternak's own writing habits and love of a tidy study, the history of the Constituent Assembly, and the shadowy figure of Commissar Strelnikov — whose reputation continues to precede him.
📖 Follow along with the essay and printable version at https://camscampbellreads.substack.com/p/doctor-zhivago-chapter-8
Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago, Anna Pasternak.
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book, Peter Finn, Petra Couvée
It's also available as a YouTube video here.
All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI
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