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Nadiia Humeniuk's novel Crown for One Night begins like a detective story: a beauty contest winner is found dead in a Warsaw hotel. Why didn't the newspapers report anything about the young beauty's death or her short-lived triumph? Although this dramatic episode defines the title of the novel, it is not the beginning but the end of the life story of Danylo Nerodov and his family. The fate of the Ukrainian Nerodov in the turbulent years between the two world wars, in lands that pass from one government to another, from one country to another, is dramatically intertwined with the life of his eternal rival Count Nerodov, an international adventurer . The author compares the main characters to the biblical Abel and Cain. Avdiy-Abel goes through the same fate as hundreds of thousands of western Ukrainian peasants - camps, the Kolyma, backbreaking labour in the logging and mining fields - but remains unbroken. Kalisiy-Kain zealously serves the Soviet government, rising through humiliation and intimidation of others. The dramatic events of the past do not let go, history repeats itself, and redemption must take place.