Paolo Mancosu continues an investigation he began in his 2013 book Inside the Zhivago Storm. In this book Mancosu extends his detective work by reconstructing the network of contacts that helped Pasternak smuggle the typescripts of Doctor Zhivago outside the Soviet Union and following the vicissitudes of the typescripts when they arrived in the West.

Paolo Mancosu is Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Inside the Zhivago Storm: The Editorial Adventures of Pasternak's Masterpiece and Smugglers, Rebels, Pirates: Itineraries in the Publishing History of Doctor Zhivago. He has been a fellow of the Humboldt Stiftung, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Institut d'Études Avancées in Paris.