A Note on Sources, Translation, Transliteration and Those Funny Russian Names
Introduction
1. How to Know Who You Really Are: Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
(Or: Don’t throw yourself under a train)
2. 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)
3. How to be Optimistic in the Face of Despair: Requiem by Anna Akhmatova
(Or: Don’t wear tight shoes on prison visits)
4. 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)
5. How to Not be Your Own Worst Enemy: Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
(Or: Don’t kill your best friend in a duel)
6. How to Overcome Inner Conflict: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Or: Don’t kill old ladies for money)
7. 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)
8. 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)
9. How to Have a Sense of Humour about Life: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
(Or: Don’t get run over by a tram after talking to Satan)
10. How to Avoid Hypocrisy: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
(Or: Don’t buy non-existent peasants as part of a get-rich-quick scheme)
11. How to Know What Matters in Life: War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
(Or: Don’t try to kill Napoleon)
Recommended Reading
Acknowledgements
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Copyright
