The French novelist and biographer Henri Troyat (1911-2007), a member of the French Academy and winner of the Goncourt, was born in Moscow and had a deep knowledge of Russian literature and language. In his recent biography (2006), he talks about the life and work of Boris Pasternak (1890-1960).

This major author of contemporary Russian literature, poet, translator, and novelist, had a fate beyond the ordinary. His life was marked by the historical upheavals of his time, as well as his passionate dedication to diametrically opposed subjects. Tolstoy, Scriabin, and Rilke were among the creators with whom his parents associated (his father was a painter and his mother a pianist). After first abandoning music and then philosophy, Pasternak discovered that he wanted to dedicate himself to writing. His poetic collections reveal the originality of his talent and establish his reputation. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution deeply affected him, and he believed it was humanity's last hope. In the 1930s, he mainly translated poets such as Goethe, Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, and Verlaine.

In 1945, Pasternak began writing "Doctor Zhivago". With this iconic novel, which was banned for a long time in the Soviet Union and initially published in Italy in 1957, he received the Nobel Prize in 1958, which he was pressured to decline at the time. With this biography, Henri Troyat restores, beyond the conventional image, the universal vision of a great writer, shedding light on his journey through the historical events that shook his era in a country that is once again at the center of current events.