Solzhenitsyn's massive historical cycle (latest volume soon out from Notre Dame, I think) got me though the winter in the city a few years ago. I carried the books around so much that they wore down much more than the public library might have reasonably expected them to. (Some entirely fair compensation was provided at their request.) Other parallels from east of Europe were found in different works -- a few characters in Green Tent, Life and Fate, etc.
Identifying with characters in stories from distant countries can be useful. It allows you to contextualize your own difficulties within a more universal sense. If you face a good bit of socially rooted adversity, and you only have the stories of your own people, you might not understand the event. Once you have a more clear understanding, you don't jump over the Wall, or swim the Tiber -- you cross the aisle and sit in the back benches of the loyal opposition awhile, or linger with the cross-benchers. You step outside the sway of the partisans.