Boris Pasternak's epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family in Russia. Though originally published in Italy in 1957, "Dr. Zhivago" was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. Dr. Yury Zhivago, Paternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks; wandering throughout Russia, he is unable to take control of his fate, and dies in utter poverty. The poems he leaves behind constitute some of the most beautiful writing in the novel.