The Dark Night of the Soul is a novel about a Ukrainian author, Lev Veles, who embarks on a spiritual journey to seek redemption and make his life cohere. Lev hopes to reconcile with his Russian daughter, Sophia, who believes that he is responsible for her mother’s death. In Venice during the height of the pandemic, he meets a grotesquerie of characters at a Carnival ball who challenge his Christian faith. Lev struggles with competing beliefs – science vs. religion; reality vs. illusion; and spirituality vs. nihilism – before facing his demons during his dark night of the soul. Sophia undertakes her own perilous search for the father of her unborn child. In war-torn Ukraine, she discovers the truth about Lev and learns that human evil is worse than any supernatural evil. Lev’s spiritual journey parallels Ukraine’s quest for existence: as Russia tries to destroy her spirit, Ukraine must overcome her own dark night of the soul.