Breathe
By Mónica Hernández
Victoria Amelina's name may not mean anything to many people, but to some people it means a lot. She was born in a place called Lvov, Ukraine, on January 1, 1986. Little is known of her life prior to her novels, except that when she was 14 her family moved to Canada. For some reason (or many reasons) it didn't take long for them to return to their hometown, where Victoria earned a degree in computer science and worked on "high-tech" issues. There is little information about how she came to become a writer, but in 2015 she published her first novel, The Fall Syndrome: About Homo Compatiens (something like The Fall Syndrome, The Compassionate Man) which was an immediate success. It deals with the protests, riots and massacre on protesters, all stemming from the fall of the Ukrainian president, accused of nepotism, embezzlement... (and the rest of the usual suspects). The novel was not only well received in literary and academic circles, but received several literary awards and accolades from critics and the public. Victoria not only showed a deep and simple pen, but a direct and committed one. She won the Joseph Conrad Literary Prize and was a finalist for the European Union Prize for Literature. She moved to Kiev and devoted herself to writing exclusively. A luxury for many of us who write. For her, a short and intense luxury.
