UKRAINIAN MONSTER
AN AMERICAN STORY

                                                      Viktoriya Volkov is a Ukrainian

                                                    American writer shaped by the

                                                    collision of Slavic faith,

                                                    Soviet aftershock, and American

                                                    freedom. Raised in the Pentecostal

                                                    church that survived Russian

                                                    persecution, she grew up inside its

                                                    fear and endurance—and broke with

                                                    it to seek her own path.

 

​

She found her voice in the raw clarity of artists like Eminem, George Orwell, and Albert Camus—who revealed both freedom’s abyss and its road to self-invention. That path later took her into the study of conservative and liberal thought and to teaching at a program held at Oxford University on how revolution was averted in England.

 

Then her brother became mentally ill and disappeared onto the streets of Portland. When neither belief nor freedom could help him, she returned home to search for him.

 

This began Ukrainian Monster: An American Story—for those who search through fracture for freedom, belonging, and a way to know oneself.