"A book is a cubic piece of burning, smoking conscience-and nothing else." -Boris Pasternak, 1922 Even though Pasternak knew that he was risking his life and the lives of the people he loved by writing his novel, he still felt obligated to write it. The novel Doctor Zhivago is one of the greatest love stories of the last century and an examination of the role of conscience in personal life. It is also a truthful description of the birth of both the October Revolution and the Soviet State. Due to the time period in which the novel was written, the later were documented in a less open form. Doctor Zhivago & an anatomy of a Revolution provides a close reading of the text and offers a clearer vision of the times the novel describes.