Sofka Zinovieff

No happy endings

The beautiful, widowed Olga Ivinskaya, exiled to the gulag for her association with Boris Pasternak, was as tragic a figure as her fictional counterpart, according to Pasternak’s great niece

issue 27 August 2016

Between agreeing to review this book and receiving it, I got worried. Like many, I adore Doctor Zhivago with its tragic love story between the eponymous doctor-poet and the beautiful Lara, set in post-revolutionary Russia. When in Moscow, I followed the trail of literary pilgrims to Boris Pasternak’s dacha in the writers’ village of Peredelkino.

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