['The Nobel Prize' is about] the 1958 prize for literature bestowed on Boris Pasternak and renounced by him under extreme and vicious pressure from the Soviet authorities, who threatened him with lifelong banishment….

Mr Krotkov has been seized with the idea of turning the story of this conflict into a novel. He knew Pasternak and his family quite well; he had observed Khrushchev at close quarters; he knew something of the political background to the condemnation of 'Dr Zhivago' and the subsequent harrying of its author to a premature death. He knew more than most about the complex relationship between Pasternak, his wife Zinaida, and his mistress, Olga Ivinskaya (who was rushed off to a labour-camp as soon as he was dead).

But all this knowledge is wasted because, presented in novel form, it is mixed up with a great deal of non-knowledge; so that the reader has no...