The great-niece of Boris Pasternak – the author of “Dr.
Anna Pasternak claims her book, Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago, is the unauthorized source for Lara Prescott’s best-selling book, The Secrets We Kept.
The Niece’s Book is a biography of Boris Pasternak and his lover Olga Ivinskaya, who they believe is the inspiration for “Lara” in the classic 1957 novel.
Ms. Prescott, named after Lara Antipova, the main character in Dr.
The grandniece of Dr. Zhivago author Boris Pasternak, Anna Pasternak (pictured) claims her book Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago is the unauthorized source for Lara Prescott’s best-selling novel The Secrets We Kept.
Ms. Pasternak’s book ‘Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago’ by Anna Pasternak (left) is a biography of Boris Pasternak and his lover Olga Ivinskaya, who they believe was the inspiration for ‘Lara’ in the 1957 classic novel is . Novelist Lara Prescott is being sued for £2million for ‘stealing’ Ms Pasternak’s book in The Secrets We Kept (right).
Nicholas Caddick QC, representing Ms Pasternak, said in the High Court today: “Both books aim to tell the story in an attractive way, neither of them is trying to write a history book or a thesis… and that really sets these two books apart from various other books , to which in this case the sources themselves are referred.
“It’s also interesting to note that both books are marketed as an attempt to give Olga a voice, a place in history, and we can see that in Lara herself, in the title: Lara: The Untold Love Story That Inspired Doctor Zhivago.
“The fact of the matter is that both of these books were very well received, and we can see that from the front-page reviews from Lara herself.”
Mr Caddick continued: “The defendant alleges that 95 per cent [of Pasternak’s work] was taken from other works or slightly adjusted, but we will see later when we go through it that this is simply not true, and in any case the defendant did so herself.’
He outlined the four key sources used by both Pasternak and Prescott, including “The Pasternak Affair” by Sergio D’Angelo.
“The defense’s contention that my client used this book extensively but gave it no more than a scant attribution hardly seems fair, especially when The Secrets We Kept contains no attributions at all, only general acknowledgment,” he said.
“There are 58 credits for The Affair in Lara, so it’s not fair to say there are sparse attributions.
“It’s definitely misleading because a lot of the information in The Affair comes from A Captive of Time. [Olga Ivinskaya’s memoirs] and A Captive of Time is quoted very frequently in the notes of my clients in Lara.’
Both Pasternak’s and Prescott’s works also draw on Legendy Potapovskogo pereulka, the memoirs of Irina Kosovi, Olga’s daughter.
While writing her book in 2014, Pasternak commissioned a partial translation of Legendes and alleges that Prescott violated copyright by taking translated passages from Lara and using them in her own work.
Lara Prescott (pictured), who is named after the main character in Dr.
Mr Caddick said: ‘My learned friend comments on the unpolished nature of the translation.
“It was not commissioned to produce something that would be generally approved, and anyway the court is not concerned with the objective quality of the translation, but … whether the defendant appropriated it [Pasternak’s] artistic and intellectual creation.
“The meaning of Legendes is twofold. First, the fact that text from Legendes found its way into the defendant’s book tends to indicate that the defendant had access to and copied from it.
“The Legendes claim therefore strengthens the Lara claim, but there is a separate claim, and the fact that the defendant used text also leads to a separate claim of copyright infringement.”
British journalist Anna Pasternak does not claim that Prescott “lyrically copied” her work, but claims that she included and excluded her selection and arrangement of material in the story.
Mr Caddick told the court: “This case is not based on text copy.
“Both parties use ‘textual copying’, but it’s misleading if you mean ‘linguistic’ or ‘linguistic copying’.
dr Zhivago is Boris Pasternak’s most famous work and the subject of David Lean’s 1965 blockbuster of the same name, in which Lara is played by Julie Christie.
“Copying text is a convenient shortcut, but the point is that text isn’t just words, it’s the process of deciding, forming, selecting, and arranging them.”
The Duchess of Cambridge’s cousin Lucy Middleton was involved in the case last year as lead counsel for publisher Penguin Random House – which published The Secrets We Kept.
Anna Pasternak’s book was written to find inspiration for her great-uncle’s central character, Lara, who argued that she was based on his lover Olga Ivinskaya.
dr Zhivago is Boris Pasternak’s most famous work and the subject of David Lean’s 1965 blockbuster of the same name, in which Lara is played by Julie Christie.
The novel follows the love story of two main characters, Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova, during the Russian Revolution and WWI.
The hearing continues.