Zhivago's Secret Journey: From Typescript to Book - Hardcover

Mancosu, Paolo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0817919643 ISBN 13: 9780817919641

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press, 2016

Synopsis

Paolo Mancosu continues an investigation he began in his 2013 book Inside the Zhivago Storm, which the New York Book Review of Books described as "a tour de force of literary detection worthy of a scholarly Sherlock Holmes". In this book Mancosu extends his detective work by reconstructing the network of contacts that helped Pasternak smuggle the typescripts of Doctor Zhivago outside the Soviet Union and following the vicissitudes of the typescripts when they arrived in the West. Mancosu draws on a wealth of firsthand sources to piece together the long-standing mysteries surrounding the many different typescripts that played a role in the publication of Doctor Zhivago, thereby solving the problem of which typescript served as the basis of the first Russian edition: a pirate publication covertly orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He also offers a new perspective, aided by the recently declassified CIA documents, by narrowing the focus as to who might have passed the typescript to the CIA. In the process, Mancosu reveals details of events that were treated as top secret by all those involved, vividly recounting the history of the publication of Pasternak’s epic work with all its human and political ramifications.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"Just when we thought that most of the mysteries had been cracked, Paolo Mancosu's book shows how the foreign publication of Boris Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago' was an even more complex process than anyone could have imagined. A wonderful work of a true scholar." 
Robert Service, Emeritus Professor of Russian History, St Antony's College, Oxford

"Paolo Mancosu's path-breaking  investigations, carried out in public and private archives in several countries, have resulted in a brilliant monograph on the history of the first, the CIA-assisted publication of the Russian original text of Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago in 1958. Mancosu's new book resolves almost all the riddles that have haunted Pasternak scholars for more than half a century."
Lazar Fleishman, Professor of Russian Literature, Stanford University

About the Author

Paolo Mancosu is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of several books in the philosophy of mathematics. He is also the author of Inside the Zhivago Storm: The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak's Masterpiece and Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates: Itineraries in the Publishing History of Doctor Zhivago. He has been a fellow of the Humboldt Stiftung, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Institut d'Études Avancées in Paris.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0817919643
• ISBN 13: 9780817919641
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304