Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak — Read

It remains to tell the uncomplicated story of the last eight or nine years of Yuri Andreevich's life, in the course of which he declined and went more and more to seed, losing his knowledge and skill as a doctor and as a writer, would emerge from this state of depression and despondency for a short time, become inspired, return to activity, and then, after a brief flash, again fall into prolonged indifference towards himself and everything in the world. During these years his longtime heart ailment, which he himself had diagnosed earlier, though he had no idea of the degree of its seriousness, advanced greatly.

He arrived in Moscow at the beginning of the NEP,1 the most ambiguous and false of Soviet periods. He was more emaciated, overgrown, and wild than at the time of his return to Yuriatin from his partisan captivity. Along the way he had again gradually taken off everything of value and exchanged it for bread, plus some cast-off rags, so as not to be left naked. Thus, as he went, he ate up his second fur coat and his two-piece suit and appeared on the streets of Moscow in a gray papakha, foot cloths, and a threadbare soldier's greatcoat, which, lacking its buttons, which had all been cut off, had turned into a wraparound prisoner's robe. In this outfit, he was in no way distinguishable from the countless Red Army soldiers whose crowds flooded the squares, boulevards, and train stations of the capital.