"The White Guard" is the first major work of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of "The Master and Margarita", and is the only one of his novels to be even part-published during his lifetime. Drawing closely on Bulgakov`s experiences of the horrors of civil war, the book opens in 1918, in the German-occupied city of Kiev. Petlyura`s Socialists are camped outside awaiting their moment while the Bolsheviks watch, contemplating their buried armaments. This is a time of revolution and turmoil, a time of waiting and uncertainly. Here we meet the Turbin family, and watch as each member of this extraordinarily resilient and proud group of people makes his or her choice and is forced, one way or another, to come to terms with the new regime.