Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak was a Russian poet, translator and novelist, born in Moscow in 1890 into a cultured family. His father was a painter and his mother a pianist, and he first trained in music and philosophy before turning to poetry. His early collections, especially My Sister, Life, made him one of the leading poets of his generation in the Soviet Union. Under growing political pressure he wrote less of his own verse and earned his living largely through translation, producing well-loved Russian versions of Shakespeare and Goethe. His only novel, Doctor Zhivago, a broad picture of Russian life through revolution and war, could not be published in the Soviet Union and first appeared abroad in 1957. It brought him international fame and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which he was forced to decline under official pressure. He died in 1960 and is remembered for his lyrical voice and his insistence on the value of private life and conscience.