Cannot edit, now cannot open a document in Pages 5.2

I have Pages version 5.2, running on Mavericks. I have been working on a second edition of my book. (First edition was done using an earlier version of Pages, either '09 or the next one thereafter in 2011.) Pages has been regularly updated on an ongoing basis. I have been successfully editing the document on and off for the past several months, until this morning. I got to the last page of the document, and it was oddly locked, as in I could not put my cursor anywhere to edit the content found there. After several attempts, decided to close the document and try to reopen it again. Except that pages wouldn't open if I tried to open the document, kept failing before it even started. The document seems corrupted as even preview won't open it.
If I try to open Pages now it says "the last time you had Pages with windows open, do you want to re-open those windows". If I say yes, it crashes instantly. If I say no, Pages can open. However, and this is the BIG problem, I cannot open my book document, we are talking about a 70,000 page book, with thousands of words of new edits. I have an external backup but not of the changes I have done in the last week.
Any help anyone can offer to recover the document will be extremely appreciated as this is nothing short of a "catastrophe" for me right now.

There was no Pages 2011, there were successive updates to Pages '09 the latest being to v4.3.
I hope this scare has been a warning to you.
If you have the latest Pages 5.2 installed, unopenable files will remain so and the content can not be accessed by any other software due to the obscure file package Apple has used.
You could have by passed the crash by holding down the shift key so that Pages didn't automatically reopen the damaged file.
You are lucky you have a healthy copy on iCloud. Because iCloud synchs files, it could so easily have synched a bad copy. I strongly advise you to create your own backups, personally I don't trust Time Machine, on separate drives. Also use a more reliable and secure software than Pages. One that lets you access the content of files should they go pear shaped, e.g. LibreOffice (free).
Peter

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