Boris Pasternak’s poetry readings were like pop concerts – a pause from the author spurring “the entire crowd to roar the next line of his verse in unison back at him”. Stalin himself was a fan, ordering the secret police to “leave him in peace, he’s a cloud-dweller”.
But someone had to pay for Pasternak’s anti-Soviet novel Doctor Zhivago, and this was Olga Ivinskaya, the writer’s lover, muse, and the woman upon whom the fictional character of Lara was based. Lara and Yuri’s romance, Anna Pasternak argues, was a “passionate cri de coeur” to the love of Pasternak’s life. Olga was imprisoned twice in Siberian labour camps as a result of their relationship. Pieced together for the first time – family members before the author (Boris’s great-niece) have always denied Olga’s significance – it’s a story with enough romance and suffering to make a moving novel or film in its own right.
Lara is published by William Collins (£20). Click here to buy it for £16
