The book concerns the subject matter of illness in Ukrainian popular literature. The author refers to interdisciplinary approaches that combine humanist-leaning currents of medicine with those literary studies perspectives that appreciate the importance of corporeality in studying culture and identity. Narratives of malady in popular culture – which shapes social attitudes and worldviews – make up a new, ethically engaged social discourse that stresses the importance of individual perspectives and causes Ukrainian-language works of popular fiction to become initiators of cultural change.