This book is an attempt to rethink the biography of Lesya Ukrainka, in which illness and creativity, Ukraine and ‘foreigners’, politics and literature, classics and modernity, love and death are intertwined. Illness and writing. The birth of creativity from the trauma experienced at the bedside of the terminally ill Merzhynskyi. Spiritual and intellectual closeness to Drahomanov. Relations with Kobylyanskaya as a metaphor for women's culture. Fatum of artistic madness, which she knew in moments of creative elevation. Travels in Europe and sanatorium tourism. The status of ‘otherness’ as the recognition of a ‘new woman’ and a ‘foreigner’ in the homeland. ‘Own’ through the prism of historical and cultural exoticism.