Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago
    Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago
    Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago
    Audiobook11 hours

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

    Written by Anna Pasternak

    Narrated by Antonia Beamish

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    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.

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 24, 2017
    ISBN9780062571618
    Author

    Anna Pasternak

    Anna Pasternak is the New York Times bestselling author of Princess in Love and Lara, which revealed the true story of the love affair behind her great uncle Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, Tatler, and every major British newspaper. She lives in England.

    Related to Lara

    Related audiobooks

    Asian History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Dissident Lit

      Sep 1, 2022

      My sophomore year in college, I took a class on the Russian novel. I remember our goodlooking young professor striding across campus in a long black coat, heads turning in his wake. It was said he looked like Lenin. His eyes burned like coals, his ch

      9 min read

    • Article

      “Where Poetry Comes From”

      Sep 1, 2020

      This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful. —Oksana Zabuzhko “Language, any language,” observed the young poet Oksana Zabuzhko, “is the capital love of my life” because “nothing else has the power to s

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Poet for the Age of Brexit

      Sep 12, 2017

      A Poet for the Age of Brexit
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘We Exist Upon The Fringe Of The World’: The Subversive American Poets Who Fell Into Obscurity

      Jul 3, 2023

      In mid-century America, avant garde and alternative poetry was considered subversive, dangerous and hostile. To write and publish poems about drugs and sexuality, or poems with anti-nationalist, anti-war sentiment, was to attract suspicion from the a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Obsession Is Universal

      Apr 19, 2018

      Is there art without obsession? Obsession is endemic to the human condition.  It drives creation like sunlight nourishes plants. If artists are observers of human follies and failings, then depicting obsession comes with the terrain.  Three recently

      6 min read

    • Article

      László Krasznahorkai

      Jun 15, 2018

      László Krasznahorkai
      27 min read

    • Article

      Can a Novel Be a Fugue?

      Jul 31, 2017

      Can a Novel Be a Fugue?
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Nobel Prize Winner You’ve Never Heard Of

      Apr 6, 2018

      Agnon dedicated the last two decades of his life to writing about his hometown as a symbol of the world of eastern European Jewry destroyed in the Holocaust. Asked by a literary critic what he was trying to accomplish, he answered simply: “I am build

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why Read Literary Biography?

      Dec 14, 2022

      Why Read Literary Biography?
      8 min read

    • Article

      Cry Out with a Woman’s Voice: Love, Resistance, and the Erotic Verse of Syria’s National Poet

      Feb 14, 2019

      It’s impossible to separate the personal from the political in Qabbani’s works. The post Cry Out with a Woman’s Voice: Love, Resistance, and the Erotic Verse of Syria’s National Poet appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Lara

    4.5/5

    13 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words