The Anna Karenina fix: life lessons from Russian literature

How to know who you really are : Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy (or : don't throw yourself under a train)

How to face up to whatever life throws at you : Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (or : don't leave your wife while she's pregnant)

How to be optimistic in the face of despair : Requiem by Anna Akhmatova (or : don't wear tight shoes on prison visits)

How to survive unrequited love : A month in the country by Ivan Turgenev (or : don't fall in love with your best friend's wife)

How to not be your own worst enemy : Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (or : don't kill your best friend in a duel)

How to overcome inner conflict : Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (or : don't kill old ladies for money)

How to live with the feeling that the grass is always greener : Three sisters by Anton Chekhov (or : don't keep going on about Moscow)

How to keep going when things go wrong : One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (or : don't forget to take your spoon to prison with you)

How to have a sense of humour about life : The master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (or : don't get run over by a train after talking to Satan)

How to avoid hypocrisy : Dead souls by Nikolai Gogol (or : don't buy non-existent peasants as part of a get-rich-quick scheme)

How to know what matters in life : War and peace by Lev Tolstoy (or : don't try to kill Napoleon).