The White Guard

Drawing closely on Bulgakov's personal experiences of the horrors of civil war as a young doctor, The White Guard takes place in Kyiv, 1918, a time of turmoil and suffocating uncertainty as the Bolsheviks, Socialists and Germans fight for control of the city. It tells the story of the Turbins, a once-wealthy Russian family, as they are forced to come to terms with revolution and a new regime. Bulgakov's first novel, The White Guard is one of the greatest works of twentieth century Russian literature. As epic a chronicle of life and death in the Russian Empire as War and Peace.