Welcome to our Book Club!
Our next Book Club meeting via Zoom is scheduled for Thursday, November 19th, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Portland time. We’ll be discussing The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée, which is available in book and e-book formats at the Multnomah County Public Library and the Washington County Public Library as well as for sale online. For links to “Discussion Questions” and the Zoom connection, scroll down the page. New participants always welcome!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Peter Finn is a nonfiction author who serves as International Editor at The Washington Post. His work often blends historical narrative with political and cultural analysis. Finn’s writing has appeared in major outlets, and he is recognized for his ability to bring Cold War history and political intrigue to a broad audience. The Zhivago Affair is his most acclaimed work.
Petra Couvée is a distinguished Russian literature expert, author, and translator who is best known for her translations of major works by Nabokov, Tsvetaeva, and Boris Pasternak. She has taught at universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Couvée lives in the Netherlands and is affiliated with Leiden University, where she is a Guest in the Faculty of Humanities and the LUCL Academic Language Centre.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout went to a village outside Moscow to visit Russia’s greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the manuscript of Pasternak’s only novel, Dr. Zhivago, suppressed by Soviet authorities. Upon being published in Italy, this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA published it in Russian and smuggled it into the USSR, where it was devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed from friend to friend. Pasternak became a Nobel Laureate in 1958 as well as the first of Russia’s great writer-dissidents. Unfortunately, though, Soviet authorities pressured him to decline the award, which his son Yevgeny later accepted on his behalf in 1989. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands who defied their government to bid him farewell. First to obtain CIA files providing proof of the agency’s involvement, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée tell the story of how a forbidden book became a secret weapon in the ideological battle between East and West.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Click on the meeting date below to join!