Talk: The New Translation of Doctor Zhivago

Pushkin House invites to join the talk with Nicolas Pasternak Slater, who presents and reads extracts from his new translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Maya Slater, the Picture Editor, will present some of the 68 illustrations by Leonid Pasternak (the author’s father and translator’s grandfather), discussing their stories and explaining some of their unexpected associations with the novel.

Nicolas is half Russian – the Russian Impressionist artist Leonid Pasternak was his grandfather, and the poet Boris Pasternak his uncle. He was brought up speaking Russian and went on to study Russian in the Navy during his National Service, and then at Oxford University. After two years of doing research in applied linguistics in Milan, he changed careers and studied medicine. Nicolas spent his working life as a doctor, ending up as a Consultant Haematologist at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London. After retirement, he returned to languages and took up translating. He published translations of Pasternak’s Family Correspondence 1921-1960, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, Pushkin’s A Journey to Arzrum, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories, and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, all for OUP; and Chekhov’s The Beauties: Essential Stories for Pushkin Press. His latest project has been translating Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago for The Folio Society; this book has now appeared in a beautiful Limited Edition.

Maya Slater read French at Oxford University, and went on to have a career as a University Lecturer in French at Westfield College and later at the Queen Mary University of London. Since retiring she edited her husband’s translation of Pasternak’s Family Correspondence 1921-1960, and published a novel, Mr Darcy’s Diary. She also edited the translation of Doctor Zhivago and was responsible for selecting and presenting the illustrations by Pasternak’s father, the Russian Impressionist painter, Leonid Pasternak.

The talk will be held in English.