The Zhivago Affair

1956. Boris Pasternak knew his novel, *Doctor Zhivago*, would never be published in the Soviet Union as the authorities regarded it as seditious, so, instead, he pressed the manuscript into the hands of an Italian publishing scout and allowed it to be published in translation all over the world - a highly dangerous act. 1958. The CIA, recognising that the Cold War was primarily an ideological battle, published *Doctor Zhivago* in Russian and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. It was immediately snapped up on the black market. Pasternak was later forced to renounce the Nobel Prize in Literature, igniting worldwide political scandal. With first access to previously classified CIA files, *The Zhivago Affair* gives an irresistible portrait of Pasternak, and takes us deep into the Cold War, back to a time when literature had the power to shake the world.