The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book

Finn, an editor at the Washington Post who was the paper’s Moscow bureau chief, and Couvée, a writer who teaches at Saint Petersburg State University, offer a detailed account of the events leading up to the 1956 publication of Doctor Zhivago, the only novel by Russian poet Boris Pasternak (1890–1960); the authors also describe Pasternak’s subsequent effect on international politics. Along with tracking the manuscript as it traveled from Pasternak to his Italian publisher, Finn and Couvée provide a biography of the poet-novelist and an exploration of Soviet policy during the Cold War. The book also chronicles the machinations employed by the KGB to stop the publication of the manuscript and those of the CIA to aid its publication. Because of the nature of the factual material, veteran reader Vance isn’t given much opportunity to display his way with dialogue. But he makes up for that with his facility for pronouncing Russian names and words, and by using his crisp, precise British delivery to clarify the complex twists and turns this real-life thriller takes. A Pantheon hardcover. (June)