The White Guard

For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia’s The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy’s artistic prowess displayed over five decades – experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army, ‘The Two Hussars’ contrasts a dashing father and his mean-spirited son. Illustrating Tolstoy’s belief that art must serve a moral purpose, ‘What Men Live By’ portrays an angel sent to earth to learn three existential rules of life, and ‘Two Old Men’ shows a peasant abandoning his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to help his neighbours. And in the highly moving ‘Master and Man’, Tolstoy depicts a mercenary merchant travelling with his unprotesting servant through a blizzard to close a business deal – little realizing he may soon have to settle accounts with his maker. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.