First published 2019
Sally Forrester and Irina work in the CIA typing pool when their superiors pull them from their desks for an unprecedented mission. The agency wants them to extract Boris Pasternak's banned novel Doctor Zhivago from the Soviet Union and ensure its publication worldwide. Sally brings years of espionage experience, having used her charm to extract secrets from targets across the globe. Irina enters the spy world as a complete beginner, learning tradecraft under Sally's guidance. The women must master dead drops, surveillance, and document smuggling while navigating from Moscow to Washington to European capitals. Meanwhile, Pasternak conducts his own dangerous love affair with Olga Ivinskaya, the woman who inspired his fictional heroine Lara. Soviet authorities send Olga to the Gulag for her connection to the writer. The novel follows both the CIA operation and the Russian romance, showing how literature becomes a weapon in the Cold War. The story spans continents and decades, connecting the personal risks taken by spies and lovers alike in service of art that threatens authoritarian power.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, espionage
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, spy
Setting: Europe, Moscow, Soviet Union, United States, Washington
Period: Cold War
349 pages · Hardcover · Knopf