Doctor Zhivago Slow Read

Welcome to week 14 of my 16-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Yury and Lara flee to the freezing old house at Varykino for a few last stolen days together — days of writing by moonlight, wolves howling beyond the trees, and a love both of them know is running out of time. Then Komarovsky arrives with an offer, a lie and a train ticket east. This is one of the great chapte...

Welcome to week 13 of my 16-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Yury Zhivago finally makes it back to Yuryatin — ragged, half-starved and presumed dead — to the flat opposite the house of the caryatids. What he finds waiting there sets in motion the great love affair at the centre of Pasternak's novel. In this episode of the slow read we cover the chapter titled "Opposite t...

Welcome to week twelve of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Welcome back to the Doctor Zhivago Slow Read. This week we're into Part 12 — the partisans, the taiga, and one of the bleakest and strangest stretches of the whole novel. The partisans' families arrive (the cattle-healer and self-proclaimed witch Kubarikha among them), last week's conspirators meet the...

Welcome to week eleven of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. After a chapter away from the main cast, we're back with Yury — now a captive medic of the Forest Brotherhood partisans, almost two years into a captivity he keeps trying and failing to escape. This is the chapter where Pasternak puts a doctor who has sworn to do no harm into a firefight, and asks what...

Welcome to week ten of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Chapter 10 is the strangest turn in the novel so far: Pasternak mislays his own protagonist. With Yury carried off by the Forest Brotherhood, the lens pulls back to take in the whole of Kolchak's Siberia — a grocer's wife fainting at Matins, frightened boys toasting a victory they don't believe in, a hand...

Welcome to week nine of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. This one's a favourite — much of it is written as Yury's diary, so we're deep inside his head as he works the land at Varykino, muses on art and Russian literature (Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky), and senses spring coming. Then the chapter turns: a chance sighting in the Yuryatin library brings L...

Welcome to week eight of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. In this eighth instalment of our sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago, the Zhivago family arrives in the Urals — a world apart from Moscow. We meet a cast of memorable new characters, including the lawyer Samdevyatov and the Mikulitsins, and follow the family's tense first encounter at Varyki...

Welcome to week seven of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. This is a long chapter—some 40 pages—covering a huge amount of ground, both literally and figuratively. The Zhivagos leave Moscow for Varykino in the Urals, travelling through a country in chaos: armed patrols, conscript wagons, blizzards, escaped prisoners, and the slow revelation that the Civil War is...

Welcome to week six of my sixteen-week guided slow read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Yury returns to Moscow after two years at the front to find a city — and a country — transformed. The February Revolution has happened, and possibly the July Days too. His friends are dimmer than he remembered, his son doesn't know him, and the October Revolution is about to land on his doorstep. In this...

Welcome to week five of our sixteen-week guided slow read of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. This week we cover Chapter 5, set in the chaotic summer of 1917 — the turbulent months between the February and October Revolutions. Yury, Lara and Galiullin find themselves in the fictional town of Melyuzeyevo, navigating local administration, paperwork, stolen conversations and the breakdown of order a...

This is an audio version of the essay I just published on Substack here . It's also available as a YouTube video here . All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get acc...

This is an audio version of the essay I just published on Substack here . It's also available as a YouTube video here . All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI I mentioned this series of historical fiction in my podcast of this post: The Revolution...

This is an audio version of the essay I just published on Substack here . It's also available as a YouTube video here . All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI All purchases will earn a small commission for my channel at no cost to you. This is a pu...

This is an audio version of the essay I just published on Substack here . It's also available as a YouTube video here . All quotations are from the Hayward/Harari translation. Buy the Everyman's Library edition from Amazon, Blackwells, Waterstones or Bookshop.org with this affiliate link: https://geni.us/bZsI All purchases will earn a small commission for my channel at no cost to you. This is a pu...

Introducing my slow-read of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, running from April through July 2026 on my Substack . Simon and Kristine's conversation. If you'd like to buy the book and help my channel with a small commission, use these affiliate links, and I thank you!* Hayward/Harari English translation ( Hardcover ) Hayward/Harari English translation ( Paperback )Pevear and Volokhonsky English...