FROM AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATORS RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with cruel experience of the new order and the changes it has wrought in him, and is torn between love for his wife and family, and the passionate, beautiful Lara.

Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago was nonetheless published covertly in Russian by the CIA and translated into many languages. In 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Vintage Classic Russians Series: Published for the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, these are must-have, beautifully designed editions of six epic masterpieces that have survived controversy, censorship and suppression to influence decades of thought and artistic expression.

Boris Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890 and after briefly training as a composer resolved to be a writer. He published a large number of collections of poetry, written under the burden of Soviet Russia's stringent censorship, before publishing his most famous work, Dr Zhivago, in 1958. This novel won him the Nobel Prize for Literature but the USSR's hostility to the West meant he was forced to turn it down. He died in 1960.