Pasternak, Boris (2019) ‘Doctor Zhivago’, Folio Society limited edition and first edition in new translation, together with handwritten and signed original Pasternak letter

Boris Pasternak (2019) ‘Doctor Zhivago‘, UK illustrated first edition thus, limited to 750 copies, published by the Folio Society. A new translation by Leonid Pasternak, the author’s nephew; with an introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater; and illustrations by Leonid Pasternak, the author’s father and celebrated painter. This copy is no 253. This comes together with an original and handwritten Boris Pasternak letter, signed by the Nobel Prize author. The letter: one page, 8″ x 10.5″, dated 15 February 1959. Written in German Pasternak thanks the male reader for his letter and request of a photograph which he includes into the letter [not present here]. He also thanks for the fan’s congratulations, presumably for the Nobel Prize, and concludes with warm wishes. Beautifully signed in Pasternak’s calligraphic hand. In fine condition bar the usual central creases to fit an envelope. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Doctor Zhivago in 1958. He was a superb translator of the German literary greats such as  Goethe and Schiller. Condition: fine book in very good slipcase which has a little surface wear as shown Production detials according to the publisher: – Limited to 750 hand-numbered copies – Quarter-bound in full-grain leather blocked in gold foil with paper sides hand-marbled by Jemma Lewis – Set in Albertina and printed on Arctic Volume Ivory paper – 704 pages – 68 reproductions of original paintings and sketches by Leonid Pasternak selected by Maya Slater – Limitation page signed by the translator – Introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater – Poetry translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater and Nicolas Pasternak Slater presented in both Russian and English – Endnotes by Nicolas Pasternak Slater – Ribbon marker – Gilded on all three page-edges – Paper-covered slipcase blocked in gold foil – 11½˝ x 8˝ “Doctor Zhivago’s relationship with translation has been long and controversial. The first English edition, rushed to press in 1958, is often criticised for its omissions and simplifications; the second, published over 50 years later, offers a more literal rendering, but at the cost of readability and elegance. In this definitive new translation, Nicolas Pasternak Slater, an eminent translator of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and nephew of Boris Pasternak, brings English-language readers as close as possible to the author’s authentic voice.” An extract from this edition’s Doctor Zhivago: “Not until she emerged into the street for the second time did Lara take a proper look around her. It was winter. This was the town. It was evening. It was icy cold. The streets were covered with black ice, as thick as the glass bottoms of smashed beer bottles. It hurt her to breathe. The air was thick with grey hoar frost, its hairy bristles tickling and pricking at Lara’s throat like the frozen grey fur collar that chafed her face and got into her mouth. She hurried through the empty streets, her heart pounding. Clouds of steam billowed out of the doors of tea rooms and eating houses. Frozen faces of passers-by, red as sausages, appeared out of the mist, and horses’ heads and dogs’ muzzles with icicles dangling from them like beards. The house windows with their thick layers of ice and snow looked whitewashed, with coloured shadows of lighted Christmas trees and the outlines of merrymakers moving across their opaque panes, as though the people on the street were being treated to a show of shadow pictures projected from a magic lantern onto hanging sheets.” Boris Pasternak, himself a translator, acknowledged that the principal challenge of the art was reproducing ‘the tone of what is said – and of course it is the tone that matters’. Nowhere is this truer than in his masterpiece, which in its naturally inflected and complex Russian resonates with melodiously structured sentences and startling, unexpected imagery. Nicolas’s sympathetic translation does full justice to Pasternak’s style, offering for the first time an English text that reads effortlessly while retaining the richness and musicality of the original. Source: https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/doctor-zhivago.html Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Doctor Zhivago (1957) was famously adapted into a film (1965) starring the great Omar Sharif.