Irkadura - Softcover

"My mama became a catfish when I was two, on the day I stopped talking." Neglected since birth by her mother, Irina Myshko hasn’t spoken a word for most of her short Soviet life. Outcast as a mute idiot and abused by her mother's boyfriends, she escapes into an alternate reality where true natures show and people are revealed as the beasts they are. Pregnant, homeless, and penniless, Irina has to make a choice — learn to live in this splintered world or descend into madness.

Ksenia was born in Moscow, Russia, and came to US in 1998 not knowing English, having studied architecture and not dreaming that one day she'd be writing. Irkadura is her third novel. Her other books are Rosehead and Siren Suicides trilogy (which is really one book in three parts). She lives in Seattle with her boyfriend and their combined three kids in a house that they like to call The Loony Bin.