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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
A lot
Russian Revolution and Civil War violence; executions; wartime brutality
Language
Barely any
Literary prose; minimal profanity
Sexual Content
Some
Romantic and sensual rather than explicit; extramarital affair is central to the plot
Substance Use
Some
Period drinking in wartime Russia
Emotional Intensity
Very heavy
Profound: survival under totalitarianism, the suppression of the individual, guilt of infidelity, and helplessness before history
What this book is about
Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, loves two women — his devoted wife Tonya and the luminous Lara — across a Russia being torn apart by revolution, civil war, and ideology. Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning novel is as much about the collision of private feeling and historical force as it is a love story, but the love at its center is one of literature's most consuming.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Wartime violence and historical atrocity
Extramarital affair central to plot
Deep psychological themes
Reader Verification
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