Beautiful sentences can be found in awkward books. In the Bradt travel guide on Ukraine I read: “Lviv is proud of its citizens, both the wicked and the holy. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is remembered best for the clinical term for morbidly obsessive behavior, and is one of the darker characters of the Habsburg Empire. While he studied and wrote in Prague, Germany and Italy, the novelist’s own persona is symbolic of Lviv: his father was Spanish by birth (but from Austrian Prague) and worked as the chief of police in Lemberg (Lviv); his mother was a dainty Ruthenian noble who had her child Leopold nursed by a Russian peasant woman to give him vigour. He studied and practiced law but turned to writing stories that dealt with his own childhood fantasies. His novel ‘Venus in Furs’ is a marked expression of masochistic behaviour, as was his violently bizarre marriage – he beat his wife whenever she refused to whip him.”

There is a Cossack in every man, just waiting to get out. The best place to liberate your inner Cossack is Ukraine.