Myth and Madness: A Novel

During Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity in the winter of 2013-14, Dr. Natalka Slovyanka, a beautiful, young psychiatrist from Donbas, tries to cure her mysterious patient of his ''philosophical intoxication.'' Telesyk is a storyteller who hears voices in the wind. His mind drifts between the immuring reality of the psikhushka and an imaginary world inhabited by witches, nymphs, and dragons. He engages the other patients in a fairy tale of the quest for a horse that eats burning embers and drinks fire, a myth that parallels Ukraine's search for its identity. Both patient and therapist embark on their own quests--Telesyk, to free himself from the prison of his mind and Natalka, to escape the dark secrets of her past. As different as East and West, they realize that they must unite to slay the family of dragons that are threatening their existence. Myth and Madness blends magical realism with historical events on the Maidan to tell the story of a nation's quest for its identity.