Sword and Scimitar

Malta, 16th century. The boy Nico is kidnapped by slave traders and taken to North Africa. His sister Maria has two dreams. First: to escape the island where no one stirred a finger to save her brother. But her second dream seems even harder to achieve: in a society where only sons of nobles are allowed into schools, a girl from an ordinary family wants to learn to read. And in Paris, the count Christian de Vries is growing up. From birth, he is accepted into the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, but the boy’s heart is devoted to medicine… Several years from now, all three of them will have a role in the Great Siege of Malta, when civilizations collide on a tiny island and the fate of Europe is decided.

From the slave markets of Algiers and the Sultan’s seraglio in Istanbul to the bustling quays of Paris and the knightly fortress on Malta: "Sword and Scimitar" is one of the best adventurous-picaresque sagas, a novel about the eternal struggle between religions and cultures of the East and the West. First time in Russian!