Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (10 February [O.S. 29 January] 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Pasternak’s first book of poems, My Sister, Life, was published in Berlin in 1922. Pasternak’s translations of stage plays by Goethe, Schiller, Calderón de la Barca, and Shakespeare remain very popular with Russian audiences. Pasternak was the author of Doctor Zhivago (1957), a novel that was rejected for publication in the USSR. The manuscript was smuggled to Italy and was first published there in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958. The award enraged the Communist Party, which forced him to decline the prize. Doctor Zhivago has been part of the main Russian school curriculum since 2003