132,956
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:History|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|History]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author=Peter Finn and Petra Couvee
|title=The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
|rating=5
|genre=Biography
|summary=One of the many things to come out of this incredibly clear and readable book is that we Brits, for all our literary heritage, have got nothing like an equivalent to Boris Pasternak. He or she would have to sell like Rowling, regularly capture the enjoyment and spirit of the nation a la Danny Boyle's Olympics ceremonies, and at the same time have the cultural heft of Larkin, Rushdie, Graham Greene and more combined. Someone connected with choosing recipients of the Nobel Prize declare him here to be the Soviet TS Eliot, but that's nothing like. So the reader probably has to stretch herself to see someone so well-respected and well-loved for his verse, who spent twelve years and more on a huge, society-defining novel, only for the country to nix every plan to get it published.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581345</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ingrid von Oelhafen and Tim Tate
|summary=Picture yourself in Nazi Germany, at any time of the Reich's powers. What do you do, and how do you behave? Do you recognise the fact Jews are being oppressed and have been since the first days of the Nazi regime? Do you do anything about this, or are you aware of the problems the country has had due to losing the Great War and having the whole Weimar Republic and hyperinflation, and just look after number one? Now picture yourself as a scientist. All you've known your adult life has been to furthering your knowledge in, say, physics. Do you again work purely for your own ends? For the country's – knowing all about its rulers? Or can you segregate your bosses and their leaders from your needs, and perhaps seek knowledge for the sake of the world? It's probably not a conundrum that has hit you before, given its scientific bent, but it's worth looking at what was going on at that time. Which way did Planck walk? Did Heisenberg have principles?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581647</amazonuk>
}}
