Mare Nostrum

In Mare Nostrum, Vicente Blasco Ibanez opens a world where history feels alive in stone, ritual, and memory. Young Ulysses Ferragut moves through Valencia under the spell of his father's medieval reveries, a child whose boredom in church gives way to wonder before relics, tombs, and legends of Byzantium, crusades, and exile. The tale of the impoverished Byzantine empress buried in Valencia becomes, for him, a haunting lesson in vanished splendor and the power of imagination to transform loneliness into myth. As Ulysses grows, his home becomes a theater of belief and make-believe, shaped by his mother's piety, his father's skepticism, and the lure of aristocratic beauty and heroic lineage. An empty room turned chapel, a garret packed with costumes, weapons, books, and voyages, and the glowing example of his godfather, the poet Don Carmelo Labarta, all feed his appetite for adventure, conquest, and literary glory. Later, the novel turns toward war, desire, and divided loyalties. On shipboard and in a doctor's household, Ulysses is drawn into Freya's secret life, her patriotic mission, and the propaganda of a Germany at war. Torn between caution and passion, he chooses to stand by her, stepping into a dangerous future shaped by love, national conflict, and the seductive pull of destiny. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.