Set in Kyiv in the turbulent years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stalinville is a dark, unflinching portrait of a society emerging from decades of violence, repression, and moral ruin. Jonah, a man from the social margins, survives by instinct rather than hope. After being confined to a psychiatric asylum—where the cruelty of Soviet power has grown into its most grotesque form—he escapes into the city, only to discover that the world beyond the asylum walls is no less deranged. Kyiv’s neighborhood of Stalinville, a concrete relic of Stalinist ambition, becomes a nightmarish landscape of corruption, brutality, and spiritual exhaustion, where freedom offers no shelter and survival demands a constant reckoning with despair. Yet amid the violence and decay, Jonah clings to a fragile belief in transformation. With fierce empathy and relentless honesty, Ulianenko follows his protagonist through a post-Soviet wasteland populated by broken institutions and broken people, asking whether redemption is possible when society itself seems irreparably damaged. Often compared to Émile Zola for his uncompromising naturalism, Oless Ulianenko is one of Ukraine’s most controversial and powerful literary voices. Awarded the Junior Taras Shevchenko Prize, Stalinville remains a literary landmark—disturbing, visionary, and essential—for understanding the psychic aftermath of Soviet rule and the brutal birth of a new reality.
