Abstract
Oles Ulyanenko, one of the most noticable post-Soviet Ukrainian writers, entered the history of Ukrainian literature inter alia for his scandalous novel Woman of his dreams (Жінка його мрії). Although literary critics commented predominantly upon the significant presence of erotic scenes, violence, cruelty, perversion and pathology of the novel, it deserves attention also for other reasons, e.g. the use of smell and oflactory sense - one of the most neglected senses in literature.
The analysis shows that Ulyanenko works with these elements sophistically. Smell is used not only to enrich the atmosphere, to activate the reader's attention, but it is also an indicator of psychological changes of the characters, it loses its conventional psycho-physical role and becomes a mirror of mental (or even almost metaphysical) processes.