Malta, 16th century. The boy Niko is kidnapped by slave traders and taken to North Africa. His sister Maria has two dreams. First, to escape from the island where no one lifted a finger to save her brother. However, her second dream seems even more difficult to realize: in a society where only noble sons are allowed to attend schools, a girl from a simple family wants to learn to read. And Count Christian de Vries is growing up in Paris. From birth, he was accepted into the Order of the Hospitallers, but the boy’s heart was given to medicine... A few years later, all three will play their role in the Great Siege of Malta, when civilizations will collide on the tiny island and the fate of Europe will be decided. From the slave markets of Algeria and the Sultan’s Seraglio in Istanbul to the noisy embankments of Paris and the knight's fort in Malta: “The Sword and the Scimitar” is one of the best adventure sagas, a novel about the eternal struggle between the religions and cultures of East and West. For the first time in Russian!