Audiobook9 hours
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
Written by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée
Narrated by Simon Vance
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
In May of 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to the Russian countryside to visit the country#8217;s most beloved poet, Boris Pasternak. He left concealing the original manuscript of Pasternak#8217;s much anticipated first novel, entrusted to him with these words from the author: #8220;This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.#8221;Pasternak knew his novel would never be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an assault on the 1917 Revolution, so he allowed it to be published in translation all over the world. But in 1958, the CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published Doctor Zhivago in Russian and smuggled it into the Soviet Union where it was snapped up on the black market and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak, whose funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of readers who stayed for hours in defiance of the watching KGB, launched the great Soviet tradition of the writer-dissident. With sole access to otherwise classified CIA files, the authors give us an irresistible portrait of the charming and passionate Pasternak and a twisting Cold War thriller that takes us back to a time when literature had power to shape the world.
Related to The Zhivago Affair
Related audiobooks
Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stalin Epigram: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mussolini's Daughter: The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Enchanted Wanderer: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Royal Highness Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This Side of Paradise Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOblomov Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man in the Red Coat Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America's Biggest Mass Arrest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Egyptologist Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vietnam: A New History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in Venice and Other Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gate to China: A New History of the People's Republic and Hong Kong Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Moon and Sixpence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEnemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Ivan Ilyitch Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War and Peace, Vol. 1: Dole Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Innocents Abroad Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Asian History For You
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain: History's Unknown Chapters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gulag: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rape of Nanking: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women's Voices from the Gulag Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Short History of Russia: How the World's Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spy Who Knew Too Much: An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Krakatoa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hard Road Out: One Woman’s Escape From North Korea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Japan's Infamous Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The White Mosque: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cold War: A New History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Zhivago Affair
Rating: 4.333333333333333 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
6 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Best book I have read this year. An amazing story of how Pasternak's masterpiece was smuggled out of the Soviet Union by an Italian communist to be published in Italy. Adding to the layers of intrigue is how the CIA sponsored editions to be smuggled back into the Soviet Union where Dr. Zhivago was a source of controversy from its publication in 1958 into the post-Cold War era. Once highly regarded as a poet, Pasternak was harassed and persecuted by the Soviet government following the publication of this - his only novel. Like a novel itself, Finn delivers a quality work that captures the drama of Cold War era tensions against the backdrop of the literary landscape . If you have any interest at all in Russian history and literature, move this to the top of your reading list.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent non-fiction book describing the struggles to smuggle Pasternak's masterpiece out of the Soviet Union and the problems the author faced as a consequence.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a fascinating and sometimes gripping read, but it was also oddly structured and not particularly well-written. Worth your time if you have an interest in Doctor Zhivago in particular or the Cold War in general, but not a must-read.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book to learn about the explicit/implicit means of censorship on both sides of the iron curtain. Also a very humorous book at times, which I really appreciated. VERY well written. Never a boring part, even when it got dry and technical in its recount of history. I found myself enjoying the most dense passages in a way I haven't in any book I've read all year. Very highly recommend.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dr. Zhivago is one of my husbands favorite movies, a very unusual pick for him because he usually likes ironic comedies. I remember reading this in school but had no idea of the history behind the novel nor of the man who wrote it.This is a non fiction book that reads in may ways as a thriller. The fate of many of the writers under Stalin was very oppressive, although Russians had a great love of poetry, if that which was written was thought not to be in the service of Soviet politics their fates were set. The author writes, "After 1917, nearly 1500 writers in the Soviet Union were executed or died in labor camps for various alleged infractions." Pasternak himself, somehow escaped this fate. In wanting to leave a legacy, he began writing Zhivago, a semi autobiographical novel, that would take him over ten years. In the end it was deemed by the Soviet Union, unpublishable so it was given to an Italian publisher to publish and translate and circulate throughout foreign coup tries. It would become a weapon used by the CIA, propaganda for a warning about the Cold War. There are many parts to this story and I felt that the authors did an outstanding job, following them all and keeping the book moving fluidly throughout. His messy home life is examined as is his writing career. One item I marked as amusing was how he and Nabokov felt about each other, they w3re less than impressed by the writing of the other.A book well worth reading and one I will now pass on to my husband.ARC from publisher.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"Books are different from all other propaganda media," wrote the CIA chief of covert action, "primarily because one single book can significantly change the reader's attitude and action to an extent unmatched by the impact of any other single medium...that is, of course, not true of all books at all times and with all readers -- but it is true significantly often enough to make books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda."This is the true story of how the CIA used the novel Dr. Zhivago as a weapon in the cold-war fight for the hearts and minds of Russian citizens. In fact, the CIA had a "book program" which smuggled hundreds of titles into eastern bloc countries. So, beyond all the politics, beyond the biography of Boris Pasternak, this book is also a testament to the power of literature.The book is well written, almost reading like a spy novel at times. We see what life was like in Stalinist Russia and how important the Cold War was to the U.S. We see the life of Boris Pasternak, including the open affair he carried on and the pressure placed on him to renounce the Nobel Prize for Literature.