Russian author published in full at last (Boris Pasternak)

UPI ^ | 2-17-04

[Indy Pendance]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- More than 40 years after his death, the entire works of Russian Nobel prize-winning novelist Boris Pasternak are to be published in his homeland.

A full 11-volume edition of all of Pasternak's work, including his famous love poetry, will be published within the next year, according to a report on news.com.au.

Pasternak is most famous for his massive novel "Doctor Zhivago," which was made into a motion picture starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.

The novel was finally published in Russia in 1988 as part of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness. It had previously been banned for 30 years and Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers in 1958, shortly before his death, after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, most of Pasternak's other works have yet to be published in Russia.

[Indy Pendance]

.

[VOA]

Reminds me of the Bill Mauldin cartoon about the fate of Nobel Prize winners
in The Evil Empire:

http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/all42day/art/art4jan/22paster.html

[jocon307]

WOW, thanks for posting this. Dr. Zhivago is a great book, anyone who likes the movie should read it, there is much more to the book.

I truly felt I understood the Russians a lot better after I read it. This is a great day for literature.

[Indy Pendance]

Books are always much better than movies. I never read Dr. Zhivago, but I'm adding it to my list. I've read several Tolstoy novels (not War and Peace thoug), Anna Karenina was excellent.

[jocon307]

"Anna Karenina was excellent."

Man, everybody loves that book. I guess I have to put it on my list. I've never even seen a movie of it, or anything, but I'm pretty sure I know the ending.

I'm reading a book now, just a piece of nonsense, a murder mystery. But it is described as a "national best seller" and it was a "literary guild selection" and it's awful. It's filthy and filled with negativity; there is barely one character that I can find sympathetic at all. It's way worse than the two Jackie Collins novels I read. I can only take about 2-3 pieces of cr*p like this before I have to read a "real" book. And at the rate this one is going it's like two all by itself.

So Anna may move up on the queue a bit. Dr. Zhivago was great, I really loved it, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, for sure. Very readable too, no yada-yada-yada post-modern cr*p, a great read.

The only "post-modern" book I can think of that was great, a great read, and not cr*p is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now he may be a stinking lefty (he may not be, I don't know), but that is another great book, that I would highly reccomend.