Description
This selection of Boris Pasternak's correspondence with his parents and sisters from 1921 to 1960—including more than illustrations and photos—is an authoritative, indispensable introduction and guide to the great writer's life and work. His letters are accomplished literary works in their own right, on a par with his poetry in their intensity, frankness, and dazzling stylistic play. In addition, they offer a rare glimpse into his innermost self, significantly complementing the insights gained from his work. They are especially poignant in that after 1923 Pasternak was never to see his parents again.
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"An international readership will welcome this new collection of Boris Pasternak's continually fascinating family correspondence, which gives us the opportunity to delve deeply into the whole of his thoughts and feelings over a poetic and heroic lifetime, culminating in Doctor Zhivago and the final virulent challenge to his genius and his courage."---Robert Conquest, author of Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair (1979) and The Great Terror (2007)"This magnificent collection offers us a glimpse into aspects of Pasternak's life that had previously escaped out attention. Faithfully translated and carefully annotated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, these letters help us better understand the poet's special place in twentieth-century literary and political life."---Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Los Angeles, and close friend of Boris Pasternak's"Boris Pasternak is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. This is a volume of his correspondence with his parents and sisters. The introduction and the translations are exceptionally fine: they bring back to life a brilliant, thoughtful, decent writer and his extraordinary family. Pasternak's persecution in the dark night of Stalinism and its aftermath is pain fully revealed. The letters are searingly honest and always uplifting. What a wonderful artist!"---Robert Service, professor of Russian history at Oxford University and author of Stalin: A Biography (2004) and Trotsky: A Biography (2010)"This sensitively translated and informatively annotated collection is a guide-book both to the life and mind of a great writer and to the purgatory that was Europe's twentieth century."---Timothy Gaton Ash, professor of European studies at the University of Oxford
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