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{{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=Sarah Winman
|summary=It's London in 1940. Most of the men have been conscripted and the East End is populated mainly by women and children. Josie and her friends are carrying on much as usual, though, grouping into little gangs and arguing over turf via mud fights along the Thames. But then comes a terrible night of bombing. It's the start of the Blitz and 57 consecutive nights of bombing for the East End. The fire service is stretched way beyond its capacity and the lucky ones make it out of the shelters in the morning, while the unlucky ones don't see another sunrise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408338955</amazonuk>
}}
