Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago

by Anna Pasternak

Overview

The heartbreaking story of the love affair between Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago, and Olga Ivinskaya—the true tragedy behind the timeless classic, and a harrowing look at how the Russian government has treated dissidents

When Stalin came into power in 1924, the Communist government began persecuting dissident writers. Though Stalin spared the life of Boris Pasternak—whose novel-in-progress, Doctor Zhivago, was suspected of being anti-Soviet—he persecuted Boris’s mistress, typist, and literary muse, Olga Ivinskaya. Boris’s affair with Olga devastated the straitlaced Pasternaks, and they were keen to disavow Olga’s role in Boris’s writing process. Twice Olga was sentenced to work in Siberian labor camps, where she was interrogated about the book Boris was writing, but she refused to betray the man she loved. When Olga was released from the gulags, she assumed that Boris would leave his wife for her but, trapped by his family’s expectations and his own weak will, he never did. 

Drawing on previously neglected family sources and original interviews, Anna Pasternak explores this hidden act of moral compromise by her great-uncle, and restores to history the passionate affair that inspired and animated Doctor Zhivago. Devastated that Olga suffered on his behalf and frustrated that he could not match her loyalty to him, Boris instead channeled his thwarted passion for Olga into the love story in Doctor Zhivago. 

Filled with the rich detail of Boris’s secret life, Lara unearths a moving love story of courage, loyalty, suffering, drama, and loss, and casts a new light on the legacy of Doctor Zhivago.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062439369
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	111,608
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Anna Pasternak is an author, columnist, and journalist. She writes regularly for Sunday Times Style, Condé Nast Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar, and others. She lives in Oxfordshire, England, with her husband and daughter.

Table of Contents

Map x

Family Tree xii

Prologue: Straightening Cobwebs xv

1 A Girl from a Different World 1

2 Mother Land and Wonder Papa 16

3 The Cloud Dweller 34

4 Cables under High Tension 57

5 Marguerite in the Dungeon 81

6 Cranes Over Potma 108

7 A Fairy Tale 130

8 The Italian Angel 150

9 The Fat is in the Fire 176

10 The Pasternak Affair 194

11 A Beast at Bay 213

12 The Truth of Their Agony 230

Epilogue: Think of Me Then 255

Notes 263

Select Bibliography 289

Acknowledgements and Note on Sources 291

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

An enchanting love story, wonderfully told.

Sir Ronald Harwood

Anna Pasternak does not spare an ounce of drama nor detail from the story of her great-uncle’s love affair with Olga Ivinskaya, the inspiration for Doctor Zhivago’s Lara. The result is a profoundly moving meditation on love, loyalty and, ultimately, forgiveness.

Amanda Foreman

As tragic and heartrending as Doctor Zhivago, as Anna details his two marriages, the Russian people’s love of Boris’ poetry, and the love affair that not only dominated his life but also allowed him, she posits, to write Doctor Zhivago. Hand this to Russophiles, poets, and romantics.

Booklist

Drawing on memoirs, histories, and interviews, she has produced a fascinating and often heartbreaking double portrait. Her book, which proceeds as suspensefully as a criminal investigation, is a testament to the profound bond between writer and muse.

O Magazine

Lara tells a heartbreaking love story, a tragedy in some ways as compelling as the classic its real-life protagonists inspired.

Bookpage

Pasternak writes with an intimate and lyrical simplicity that perfectly catches the emotions and torn allegiances of one of the literary world’s most compelling love stories. Lara is a testament to timeless love, yes, but also to the moral responsibility of writers to pursue truth at all costs.

Shelf Awareness

[A] riveting, tragic tale.

New Yorker

A “particularly poignant book.

Washington Post

Authoritative. . . The author convincingly establishes the unmistakable link between Lara and Olga and shows that from the time Pasternak met his muse in 1946, he and his novel were changed.

Washington Times

Lara is a chilling, upsetting reminder of what can happen when free speech is curtailed.

NPR

Lara elevates Olga way above the negatively connotative “mistress” term, giving her not only flesh and blood but mind and spirit as well.

Bookolage

2016-10-05
A British journalist investigates her great-uncle’s love affair.Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was 56 and married to his second wife, Zinaida, when he met 34-year-old Olga Ivinskaya and immediately fell in love: “She is so enchanting, such a radiant, golden person,” he exulted. “I never thought I would still know such joy.” Flattered by the attentions of Russia’s most lauded poet, Olga reciprocated his passion. Pasternak (Daisy Dooley Does Divorce, 2007, etc.) draws on family correspondence; memoirs by Olga, her daughter (whom Pasternak interviewed), Boris’ sister and son; and Boris’ own writings to sensitively examine the dramatic relationship as well as to rescue the reputation of the woman whom the Pasternak family derided and denounced. At first, Pasternak worried about discovering that Boris “used Olga” but concluded that he did his best “within the constraints of his domestic situation to honour her and her family,” supporting them financially and trusting Olga “with his most precious commodity—his work. He sought her advice, her editing and typing assistance” and showed his love in his novel Doctor Zhivago, which Pasternak reads as a “long and heartfelt love letter to her.” Nevertheless, Boris comes across as self-absorbed, at best naively romantic, enjoying “the drama of anguish” and torment that he created for long-suffering Olga and his wife and children. He seemed to care nothing about putting them at risk with his defiance of Stalinist policy. He was somewhat protected by fame, but Olga was vulnerable: twice she was arrested, sentenced to years in gulags. “I owe my life and the fact that they did not touch me in those years to her heroism and endurance,” Boris admitted. Yet he was so insensitive that upon her release from prison, he asked her daughter to tell her that their relationship was over. Pasternak’s recounting of the publication of Doctor Zhivago, and Soviet pressure for him to renounce the Nobel Prize in Literature, draws largely on Peter Finn and Petra Couvée’s The Zhivago Affair (2014). A sympathetic portrait of a woman who saw her lover in the same “heroic light” as he saw himself.

Kirkus Reviews