Doctor Zhivago (novel)
Literary criticism
Literary criticism
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[Edmund Wilson](/wiki/Edmund_Wilson "Edmund Wilson") wrote of the novel: "Doctor Zhivago will, I believe, come to stand as one of the great events in man's literary and moral history".*Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years*, Brian Boyd, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 373 [V. S. Pritchett](/wiki/V._S._Pritchett "V. S. Pritchett") wrote in the *[New Statesman](/wiki/New_Statesman "New Statesman")* that the novel is "\[t]he first work of genius to come out of Russia since the revolution."*The Statesman, Volume 22*, p. 48 When the novel came out in Italian, [Anders Österling](/wiki/Anders_%C3%96sterling "Anders Österling"), the then permanent secretary of the [Swedish Academy](/wiki/Swedish_Academy "Swedish Academy") which awards the [Nobel Prize in Literature](/wiki/Nobel_Prize_in_Literature "Nobel Prize in Literature"), wrote in January 1958: "A strong patriotic accent comes through, but with no trace of empty propaganda... With its abundant documentation, its intense local color and its psychological frankness, this work bears convincing witness to the fact that the creative faculty in literature is in no sense extinct in Russia. It is hard to believe that the Soviet authorities might seriously envisage forbidding its publication in the land of its birth". Some literary critics "found that there was no real plot to the novel, that its chronology was confused, that the main characters were oddly effaced, that the author relied far too much on contrived coincidences."Richard Pevear, Introduction, Pevear \& Volokhonsky trans. [Vladimir Nabokov](/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov "Vladimir Nabokov"), who had celebrated Pasternak's books of poetry as works of "pure, unbridled genius", however, considered the novel to be "a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelievable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences." On the other hand, some critics praised it for being things that, in the opinion of translator Richard Pevear, it was never meant to be: a moving love story, or a lyrical biography of a poet in which the individual is set against the grim realities of Soviet life. Pasternak defended the numerous coincidences in the plot, saying that they are "traits to characterize that somewhat willful, free, fanciful flow of reality."Richard Pevear, Introduction, Pevear \& Volokhonsky trans. (quoting Letter (in English) from Boris Pasternak to John Harris, 8 February 1959\). In response to criticism in the West of his novel's characters and coincidences, Pasternak wrote to [Stephen Spender](/wiki/Stephen_Spender "Stephen Spender"): 


How does the novel portray Soviet life and its realities?