Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) was born in Moscow to a wealthy family. Originally he intended to become a composer, but later chose writing as a career. His most well-known work, Dr. Zhivago, was published in the late 1950s. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958.

* Safe Conduct

Written when Pasternak was forty, Safe Conduct puzzled many readers in Russia and when it appeared in English, because its isolated sharp impressions and its juxtapositions seemed to deny chronology, but at least one critic recognized it as “the most original of autobiographies, employing a new technique of great importance.” Also included is a group of remarkable short stories, translated by Robert Payne, dealing with the mysteries of life and art, and a selection of the poems that have made Pasternak known, to the few at least, as the “outstanding Russian poet of the century.” These are translated by the British critic and poet, C. M. Bowra, and by Miss Deutsch.

* The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers

An enthralling novelette by Boris Pasternak, the author of Dr. Zhivago, Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers explores how a thirteen-year-old girl ceases to be a child and becomes a woman in Russia just before the Communist Revolution.