The prominent British translator and scholar of Russian literature Livingstone collects, translates, and comments on work by Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) on poetic inspiration and creativity. She writes primarily for English readers, but the Russian originals of the poems are on facing pages, and references are included for readers and students of Russian. The central text in the book is Pasternak's brilliant autobiographical work A Safe-Conduct. Livingstone produced a similar collection in 1985, but has so sufficiently supplemented the collection and radically revised both the translations and the commentary that she counts this one as new. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)