History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (German: Geschichte und Klassenbewu tsein: Studien ber marxistische Dialektik) is a 1923 book by the Hungarian philosopher Gy rgy Luk cs, in which Luk cs re-emphasizes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's influence on Karl Marx, analyses the concept of class consciousness, and attempts a philosophical justification of Bolshevism. History and Class Consciousness, which helped to create Western Marxism, is the book for which Luk cs is best known, and some of his pronouncements have become famous. Nevertheless, History and Class Consciousness was condemned in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and Luk cs later repudiated its ideas, and came to believe that in it he had confused Hegel's concept of alienation with that of Marx. It has been suggested that the concept of reification as employed in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) shows the strong influence of History and Class Consciousness, though such a relationship remains disputed. (wikipedia.org)

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, Arkhipelag GULAG) Note 1 is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.

Following its publication, the book initially circulated in samizdat underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal Novy Mir in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, The Gulag Archipelago has been officially published in Russia.

Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft described the book as a fine literary masterpiece, a sharp political indictment against the Soviet regime, and has had tremendous importance in raising the issue of Soviet repression in the Russian consciousness. Wheatcroft wrote that the book was essentially a literary and political work, and never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective but that in the case of qualitative estimates, Solzhenitsyn gave his high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that the scale of the camps was less than this.Note 3 UCLA historian J. Arch Getty wrote of Solzhenitsyn's methodology that such documentation is methodically unacceptable in other fields of history. Gabor Rittersporn shared Getty's criticism, saying that he is inclined to give priority to vague reminiscences and hearsay ... [and] inevitably [leads] towards selective bias.

In an interview with the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, British historian Orlando Figes stated that many Gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: The Gulag Archipelago spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered. Soviet dissident and historian Roy Medvedev referred to the book as extremely contradictory; in a review for the book, Medvedev described it as without parallel for its impact, saying: I believe there are few who will get up from their desks after reading this book the same as when they opened its first page. In this regard I have nothing with which to compare Solzhenitsyn's book either in Russian or world literature. (wikipedia.org)

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, Arkhipelag GULAG) Note 1 is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was first published in 1973, and translated into English and French the following year. It covers life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet forced labour camp system, through a narrative constructed from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and Solzhenitsyn's own experience as a Gulag prisoner.

Following its publication, the book initially circulated in samizdat underground publication in the Soviet Union until its appearance in the literary journal Novy Mir in 1989, in which a third of the work was published in three issues. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, The Gulag Archipelago has been officially published in Russia.

Historian and archival researcher Stephen G. Wheatcroft described the book as a fine literary masterpiece, a sharp political indictment against the Soviet regime, and has had tremendous importance in raising the issue of Soviet repression in the Russian consciousness. Wheatcroft wrote that the book was essentially a literary and political work, and never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective but that in the case of qualitative estimates, Solzhenitsyn gave his high estimate as he wanted to challenge the Soviet authorities to show that the scale of the camps was less than this.Note 3 UCLA historian J. Arch Getty wrote of Solzhenitsyn's methodology that such documentation is methodically unacceptable in other fields of history. Gabor Rittersporn shared Getty's criticism, saying that he is inclined to give priority to vague reminiscences and hearsay ... [and] inevitably [leads] towards selective bias.

In an interview with the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, British historian Orlando Figes stated that many Gulag inmates he interviewed for his research identified so strongly with the book's contents that they became unable to distinguish between their own experiences and what they read: The Gulag Archipelago spoke for a whole nation and was the voice of all those who suffered. Soviet dissident and historian Roy Medvedev referred to the book as extremely contradictory; in a review for the book, Medvedev described it as without parallel for its impact, saying: I believe there are few who will get up from their desks after reading this book the same as when they opened its first page. In this regard I have nothing with which to compare Solzhenitsyn's book either in Russian or world literature. (wikipedia.org)

That Printer of Udell's is a 1903 work of fiction by Harold Bell Wright.

Wright, who served as a minister before becoming a writer, created a story with Christian themes. In the story, Dick Falkner, who comes from a broken home, sees his father under the influence of alcohol and his mother starving. After his parents die, Dick goes to Boyd City in the Midwestern United States to become employed. Dick believes that Christians won't let me starve. A printer named George Udell hires Dick; both of them decide to become Christians and Dick becomes a revered member of the religious community due to his public speaking abilities and optimism. At the end of the book, Dick gets a political job in Washington, D.C.

Ronald Reagan read the book at age 11 after his mother, a member of the Protestant Disciples of Christ Church, gave him the book. Reagan says that the book inspired him to become an evangelical Christian; he became baptized by his mother's congregation. At age 66 Reagan said that the book left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil. (wikipedia.org)

That Printer of Udell's is a 1903 work of fiction by Harold Bell Wright.

Wright, who served as a minister before becoming a writer, created a story with Christian themes. In the story, Dick Falkner, who comes from a broken home, sees his father under the influence of alcohol and his mother starving. After his parents die, Dick goes to Boyd City in the Midwestern United States to become employed. Dick believes that Christians won't let me starve. A printer named George Udell hires Dick; both of them decide to become Christians and Dick becomes a revered member of the religious community due to his public speaking abilities and optimism. At the end of the book, Dick gets a political job in Washington, D.C.

Ronald Reagan read the book at age 11 after his mother, a member of the Protestant Disciples of Christ Church, gave him the book. Reagan says that the book inspired him to become an evangelical Christian; he became baptized by his mother's congregation. At age 66 Reagan said that the book left an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil. (wikipedia.org)

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (sometimes spelled Keckly; February 1818 - May 1907) was a former slave who became a successful seamstress, civil activist, and author in Washington, DC. She was best known as the personal modiste and confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady. Keckley had moved to Washington in 1860 after buying her freedom and that of her son in St. Louis. She created an independent business in the capital based on clients who were the wives of the government elite. Among them were Varina Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis; and Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee.

After the American Civil War, Keckley wrote and published an autobiography, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). It was both a slave narrative and a portrait of the First Family, especially Mary Todd Lincoln, and is considered controversial for breaking privacy about them. It was also her claim as a businesswoman to be part of the new mixed-race, middle-class that was visible among the leadership of the black community.

Keckley's relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife, was notable for its personal quality and intimacy, as well as its endurance over time. (wikipedia.org)

Excerpts from Introduction:

I have many friends among cowmen and cowpunchers. I have always been what is called a good mixer I had friends when I had nothing else. My friends were not always within the law, but I haven't said how law-abiding I was myself. I haven't been too bad nor too good to get along with.

Life has never been too serious with me I lived to play and I'm playing yet. Laughs and good judgment have saved me many a black eye, but I don't laugh at other's tears. I was a wild young man, but age has made me gentle. I drank, but never alone, and when I drank it was no secret. I am still friendly with drinking men...

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a future history science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically-linked individuals.

A controversial part of the book depicts humans, in the far-off future, escaping the dying Earth and settling on Venus -- in the process totally exterminating its native inhabitants, an intelligent marine species. Stapledon's book has been interpreted by some as condoning such interplanetary genocide as a justified act if necessary for racial survival, though a number of Stapledon's partisans denied that such was his intention, arguing instead that Stapledon was merely showing that although mankind had advanced in a number of ways in the future, at bottom it still possessed the same capacity for savagery as it has always had.

Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 that presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is initially attracted by booze and easy money (though he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.

Elmer Gantry was first published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken.

The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary and is ordained as a Baptist minister. While managing to cover up certain sexual indiscretions, he is thrown out of the seminary before completing his BD because he is too drunk to turn up at a church where he is supposed to preach. After several years as a travelling salesman of farm equipment, he becomes manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. After this catastrophe, he briefly acts as a New Thought evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. He marries well and eventually obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. Especially ironic is the way he champions love, an emotion he seems incapable of, in his sermons, preaches against ambition, when he himself is so patently ambitious, and organizes crusades against (mainly sexual) immorality, when he has difficulty resisting sexual temptation himself.

On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis Satan's cohort.

However, the book was a commercial success. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1927, according to Publishers Weekly.

Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes: The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality. Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community. The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it.

Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article called The New American People, in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels.

Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. George Babbitt, the namesake of one of Lewis' best-known novels, appears in Elmer Gantry very briefly during an encounter at the Zenith Athletic Club. (wikipedia.org)

On the spiritual path? This book is for you.

The book chronicles a journey of enlightenment with the masters of the far East, it is immensely profound and details the path to awakening. (Kay Bartholomew)

About the author:

Baird Thomas Spalding (1872-1953) was an American spiritual writer, author of the spiritual book series: Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East.

In 1924, Spalding published the first volume of Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East. It describes the travels to India and Tibet of a research party of eleven scientists in 1894. During their trip they claim to have made contact with the Great Masters of the Himalayas, immortal beings with whom they lived and studied, gaining insight into their lives and spiritual message. This close contact enabled them to witness many of the spiritual principles evinced by these Great Masters translated into their everyday lives, which Spalding describes as acts that can be accomplished by anyone who comes to know his TRUE self. Such examples are walking on water, or manifesting bread to feed the hungry party. Despite most of the action taking place in India, the Great Masters make it clear that the greatest embodiment of the Enlightened state is that of the Christ - the discovery of man's source of power within himself - that light of God - the Christ consciousness is that Christ state:

The Masters accept that Buddha represents the Way to Enlightenment, but they clearly set forth that the Christ Consciousness is Enlightenment, or a state of consciousness for which we are all seeking - the Christ light of every individual; therefore, the light of every child born into the world.

Spalding published three additional volumes before his death in 1953. Volumes 5 and 6 were published by DeVorss & Co posthumously from various articles that Spalding had written.

Spalding's books have remained in print since his death and his stories have helped to popularize the concept of Ascended Masters which became a common meme in New Age and alternative religious movements during the later twentieth century.

During the 1920s, Spalding was a personal acquaintance of Guy Ballard, also a mining engineer and founder of the I AM activity. Similar themes to Spalding can be seen in Ascended Master groups such as the Church Universal and Triumphant and the writings of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Spalding is named as an influence in the writings of New Age figures such as JZ Knight, Paul Baumann of the Methernitha sect and Father Divine.

The growth of the New Age movement during the 1970s resulted in a renewal of interest in Spalding, and several New Age figures have claimed tenuous connections to him after his death. American mystic Thane of Hawaii, founder of the Prosperos group, claimed in 1974 to have ghost-written several of Spalding's later books and accompanied him on his 1935 India tour. (wikipedia.org)

Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones; January 24, 1862 - August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper class New York aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.

Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her 15 novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and a memoir.

In 1873, Wharton wrote a short story and gave it to her mother to read. Her mother criticized the story, so Wharton decided to just write poetry. While she constantly sought her mother's approval and love, it was rare that she received either. From the start, the relationship with her mother was a troubled one. Before she was 15, she wrote Fast and Loose (1877). In her youth, she wrote about society. Her central themes came from her experiences with her parents. She was very critical of her work and wrote public reviews criticizing it. She also wrote about her own experiences with life. Intense Love's Utterance is a poem written about Henry Stevens.

In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius. This play was about an English man who was having an affair with his secretary. The play was rehearsed but was never produced. Another 1901 play, The Shadow of a Doubt, which also came close to being staged but fell through, was thought to be lost, until it was discovered in 2017. Its world premiere was a radio adaptation broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2018. She collaborated with Marie Tempest to write another play, but the two only completed four acts before Marie decided she was no longer interested in costume plays. One of her earliest literary endeavors (1902) was the translation of the play, Es Lebe das Leben (The Joy of Living), by Hermann Sudermann. The Joy of Living was criticized for its name because the heroine swallows poison at the end, and was a short-lived Broadway production. It was, however, a successful book.

Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class, late-19th-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. (wikipedia.org)

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first in his acclaimed series about detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978.

The story is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing each other and many secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination in the book about sleeping the big sleep.

FOREWORD

This revised and greatly enlarged edition of Pushing to the Front is the outgrowth of an almost world-wide demand for an extension of the idea which made the original small volume such an ambition-arousing, energizing, inspiring force.

It is doubtful whether any other book, outside of the Bible, has been the turning-point in more lives.

It has sent thousands of youths, with renewed determination, back to school or college, back to all sorts of vocations which they had abandoned in moments of discouragement. It has kept scores of business men from failure after they had given up all hope.

It has helped multitudes of poor boys and girls to pay their way through college who had never thought a liberal education possible.

The author has received thousands of letters from people in nearly all parts of the world telling how the book has aroused their ambition, changed their ideals and aims, and has spurred them to the successful undertaking of what they before had thought impossible.

The book has been translated into many foreign languages. In Japan and several other countries it is used extensively in the public schools. Distinguished educators in many parts of the world have recommended its use in schools as a civilization-builder.

Crowned heads, presidents of republics, distinguished members of the British and other parliaments, members of the United States Supreme Court, noted authors, scholars, and eminent people in many parts of the world, have eulogized this book and have thanked the author for giving it to the world.

This volume is full of the most fascinating romances of achievement under difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant endings, of stirring stories of struggles and triumphs. It gives inspiring stories of men and women who have brought great things to pass. It gives numerous examples of the triumph of mediocrity, showing how those of ordinary ability have succeeded by the use of ordinary means. It shows how invalids and cripples even have triumphed by perseverance and will over seemingly insuperable difficulties. ...

All Hallows' Eve is the last of the seven novels of the supernatural written by Charles Williams. Published by Faber and Faber in 1945, it went through three impressions that year and another in 1947. In 1948 it was published in the US by Pellegrini & Cudahy with an introduction by T. S. Eliot. There were two later translations into Italian and Spanish.

Glen Cavaliero has stated that the novels of Charles Williams, of which All Hallows' Eve is the last, move towards an ever more perfect fusion of natural with supernatural. The magical ceremonies that are meticulously described play a leading role in the plot's development and are not all the product of the author's imagination. T. S. Eliot, in his introduction to the American edition, raises the possibility that some may have been borrowed from the literature of the occult. Williams had, indeed, once belonged to A. E. Waite's Rosicrucian order, itself one of many offshoots of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Waite's order, however, was predominantly directed towards Christian mysticism, although it had its ceremonious rituals.

The magical ceremonies described in the novel are directed by Simon Leclerc in an increasingly desperate effort to subordinate Betty to his will, now that the complication of her love for Jonathan Drayton challenges his influence. The effort to make a final division between Betty's material and spirit bodies fails when Lester substitutes herself. It is a double failure, however, leading to the curtailment of Simon's power. Simon had persisted with his ceremony even when it was plainly not going to work, thus breaking a fundamental rule in magic. His will to dominate increasingly interferes with his clarity of purpose thereafter. The second ceremony involves the creation of the homunculus as a way of removing Lester. Though successful in itself, Simon's contempt for those he manipulates makes him underestimate the power of love. Lester now has a spiritual bond with Betty and also wishes to make amends to her husband; the acquisition of a body, however deformed, is the means by which she can thwart Simon's murderous intention yet again, which his lack of empathy is unable to foresee.

Love and hate are pitted against each other in other ways too. As a child Betty had been secretly christened by her nurse, who had made the Holy Spirit her sponsoring godparent. This is the third ceremony in the novel, described when Betty visits her old nurse with Jonathan. The fourth ceremony is Simon's consequentially foredoomed attempt to destroy Betty by means of a clay figure to which hairs from her brush have been added. In terms of the mechanics of the novel, the mistake made here is allowing ill-will to intrude into what should be a selfless ceremony. It is at this point, as Simon stabs at the image, and then at Betty herself, that the last of his power disappears and the cries of his followers are heard as they discover the cures he performed on them have now been reversed. ... (wikipedia.org)

The trial of Socrates refers to the trial and the subsequent execution of the Athenian philosopher Socrates in 399 BC. Socrates was tried and convicted by the courts of democratic Athens on a charge of corrupting the youth and disbelieving in the ancestral gods. The trial was described by two of Socrates' contemporaries, Plato and Xenophon, and is one of the most famous trials of all time.

The trial, last days, and death of Socrates are presented in this volume through four works of Plato. These works are the Euthyphro, Apology (i.e. Defense Speech), Crito and Phaedo (Socrates' Death scene).

The Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus; abbreviated Ecclus.) is a Jewish work, originally in Hebrew, of ethical teachings, from approximately 200 to 175 BCE, written by the Judahite scribe Ben Sira of Jerusalem, on the inspiration of his father Joshua son of Sirach, sometimes called Jesus son of Sirach or Yeshua ben Eliezer ben Sira.

In Egypt, it was translated into Greek by the author's unnamed grandson, who added a prologue. This prologue is generally considered the earliest witness to a canon of the books of the prophets, and thus the date of the text is the subject of intense scrutiny. The book itself is the largest wisdom book from antiquity to have survived.

Although excluded from the Jewish canon, Sirach was read and quoted as authoritative from the beginning of the rabbinic period. There are numerous citations to Sirach in the Talmud and works of rabbinic literature (as ספר בן סירא, e.g., Hagigah 13a, Niddah 16b; Ber. 11b). Some of those (Sanhedrin 100b) record an unresolved debate between R'Joseph and Abaye as to whether it is forbidden to read the book of Sirach, wherein Abaye repeatedly draws parallels between statements in Sirach cited by R'Joseph as objectionable and similar statements appearing in canonical books.

Sirach may have been used as a basis for two important parts of the Jewish liturgy. In the Mahzor (High Holiday prayer book), a medieval Jewish poet may have used Sirach as the basis for a poem, Mar'e Kohen, in the Yom Kippur musaf (additional) service for the High Holidays. Yosef Tabori questioned whether this passage in Sirach is referring at all to Yom Kippur, and thus argued it cannot form the basis of this poem. Some early 20th-century scholars also argued that the vocabulary and framework used by Sirach formed the basis of the most important of all Jewish prayers, the Amidah, but that conclusion is disputed as well.

Current scholarship takes a more conservative approach. On one hand, scholars find that Ben Sira links Torah and wisdom with prayer in a manner that calls to mind the later views of the Rabbis, and that the Jewish liturgy echoes Sirach in the use of hymns of praise, supplicatory prayers and benedictions, as well as the occurrence of [Biblical] words and phrases [that] take on special forms and meanings. However, they stop short of concluding a direct relationship existed; rather, what seems likely is that the Rabbis ultimately borrowed extensively from the kinds of circles which produced Ben Sira and the Dead Sea Scrolls ....

Some Christians regard the catalogue of famous men in Sirach as containing several messianic references. The first occurs during the verses on David. Sirach 47:11 reads The Lord took away his sins, and exalted his power for ever; he gave him the covenant of kings and a throne of glory in Israel. This references the covenant of 2 Samuel 7, which pointed toward the Messiah. Power (Hebrew qeren) is literally translated as 'horn'. This word is often used in a messianic and Davidic sense (e.g. Ezekiel 29:21, Psalms 132:17, Zechariah 6:12, Jeremiah 33:15). It is also used in the Benedictus to refer to Jesus (and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David).

Another verse (47:22) that Christians interpret messianically begins by again referencing 2 Samuel 7. This verse speaks of Solomon and goes on to say that David's line will continue forever. The verse ends stating that he gave a remnant to Jacob, and to David a root of his stock. This references Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah: There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots; and In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek... (Isaiah 11:1, 10). (wikipedia.org)

Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.

Owing to the author's independent-minded stance on the October Revolution, Doctor Zhivago was refused publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the manuscript was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year, an event that embarrassed and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965, and since then has twice been adapted for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2006. The novel Doctor Zhivago has been part of the Russian school curriculum since 2003, where it is read in 11th grade.

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. V. S. Pritchett wrote in the New Statesman that the novel is [t]he first work of genius to come out of Russia since the revolution. When the novel came out in Italian, Anders Österling, the then permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy which awards the 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. 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. In response to criticism in the West of his novel's characters and coincidences, Pasternak wrote to Stephen Spender:

Whatever the cause, reality has been for me like a sudden, unexpected arrival that is intensely welcome. I have always tried to reproduce this sense of being sent, of being launched... there is an effort in my novels to represent the whole sequence (facts, beings, happenings) as a great moving entity... a developing, passing, rolling, rushing inspiration. As if reality itself had freedom of choice... Hence the reproach that my characters were insufficiently realized. Rather than delineate, I was trying to efface them. Hence the frank arbitrariness of the coincidences. Here I wanted to show the unrestrained freedom of life, its very verisimilitude contiguous with improbability. (wikipedia.org)