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On the eve of the Second World War, a Jewish family's final hope lies across the world, in Shanghai
On November 9, 1938―Kristallnacht―the Nazis unleash a night of terror for Jews all across Germany. Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army rampages through China and tightens its stranglehold on Shanghai, a city that becomes the last haven for thousands of desperate European Jews.
Dr. Franz Adler, a renowned surgeon, is swept up in the wave of anti-Semitic violence and flees to Shanghai with his daughter. At a refugee hospital, Franz meets an enigmatic nurse, Soon Yi "Sunny" Mah. The chemistry between them is intense and immediate, but Sunny's life is shattered when a drunken Japanese sailor murders her father.
The danger escalates for Shanghai's Jews as the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Facing starvation and disease, Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open and protect his family from a terrible fate.
Daniel Kalla's The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish history when cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival.
- Sales Rank: #1779139 in Books
- Brand: Kalla, Daniel
- Published on: 2015-01-27
- Released on: 2015-01-27
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.20" h x 1.22" w x 6.13" l, 1.41 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
Review
“An amazing novel.” ―The Huffington Post
“With its unusual setting and blend of terror, hope, and love, this historical novel deserves a wide readership.” ―Library Journal, starred review
“An exciting, often touching story that combines wartime peril and romance in an attractive mix. [Kalla] knows how to weave a good tale, and his characters are endearing.” ―Booklist
“I ate up this novel. Recommended.” ―Historical Novel Society
“That's storytelling, pure and simple.” ―The National Post
“A big-canvas story with some very well-drawn characters.” ―The Globe and Mail
About the Author
DANIEL KALLA is the international bestselling author of Pandemic, Resistance, Rage Therapy, Blood Lies, Cold Plague, and Of Flesh and Blood. His books have been translated into eleven languages. Two novels have been optioned for film. Kalla practices emergency medicine in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he lives with his family.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
NOVEMBER 9, 1938, VIENNA
The shadow still swayed over the pavement. Franz Adler tried to blink away the memory of his brother’s dangling corpse and the silhouette it cast across the sidewalk, but the image looped over and over in his head.
A pane of glass erupted somewhere at street level, startling Franz. His hand slipped and he pierced Esther’s skin at the wrong angle. “Verdammt!” he swore under his breath as he yanked back the needle’s tip.
Three more windows shattered. The mob was so close. Its drunken cheers and raucous laughter infected the room. Franz could almost smell the stench of stale beer and body odor that must have wafted after it.
Concentrate, Adler! Finish suturing and go collect your daughter!
Eyes open or closed, the mental image persisted. As a surgeon, Franz had witnessed numerous deaths, but none compared with the memory of his own brother’s.
A damp November chill permeated the spacious apartment. Fearing a fire, the caretaker had shut off the boiler. The windows were draped and the lights off, save for the flickering flame of three candles that projected long writhing shadows against the walls. Franz had to squint through the weak light to study Esther’s blood-caked arm before him.
Another pane shattered three stories below. Franz heard a fresh wave of cheers as though it were some kind of feat to deface a city. But the voices grew more distant as the bulk of the mob stomped farther down Liechtenstein Strasse.
Esther Adler huddled for warmth under the blanket that Franz had wrapped around her shoulders. His sister-in-law’s complexion was ashen. Abrasions crisscrossed her face. But amazingly, her gray eyes still possessed a remnant of their usual calm. “Your hands, Franz,” Esther said in a hushed voice.
Franz glanced down at his shaky fingers. “Not enough light,” he muttered.
“We will manage.” A tremulous smile flitted across Esther’s lips. “With God’s help.”
“God?” Franz nodded to the curtains, which glowed red from the fires consuming Vienna. “Essie, how could it be any clearer that there is no God?” he snapped.
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t believe that. I won’t.”
Franz took a slow breath and mentally aligned the edges of Esther’s jagged wound, estimating the number of stitches it would require. Twenty, possibly more. He hoped he had enough catgut to close the laceration, which snaked almost the entire length of Esther’s forearm but, remarkably, spared the largest nerves and blood vessels.
Hannah needs you, he reminded himself as he ran a fourth stitch through Esther’s flesh. She barely flinched, despite the lack of local anesthetic. Franz always carried his suture kit in his medical bag, but he silently cursed himself for not having brought the rest of his supplies upstairs sooner. From the moment he first heard the wireless broadcasts—Goebbels’s shrill shrieks of “Juden” this and “Juden” that—Franz had expected the worst. But he had not foreseen just how bloodthirsty the backlash would become. Who could have predicted this?
Earlier, Franz had tried to rush downstairs to get local anesthetic and bandages, but Esther grabbed his arm and, dripping blood onto his sleeve, begged him to proceed without freezing. She claimed to be more afraid of the injection than the stitches, but they both knew what she really feared: if the Brownshirts or other thugs caught Franz rummaging through his ground-floor surgery, he would never return. And his daughter, Hannah, was waiting.
“It’s fine, Franz,” Esther whispered. “Just continue. Please.”
Franz looked into her kind eyes. Narrow-faced with sharp features, Esther had deep-set gray eyes that made her look older than her thirty-two years. Though not conventionally pretty, she radiated intelligence, humor, and, especially, compassion. Her empathy was boundless. Even now, with her arm splayed open in the wake of her husband’s lynching, little more than an hour earlier, she seemed as concerned for her niece’s welfare as her own. But her trembling shoulders belied her composed expression.
“All right, Essie,” he said as he looped another stitch through her arm, bringing the ragged edges a little closer together.
“We must get Hannah away from here, Franz.” Esther motioned toward the silhouettes of flames dancing against the curtains. “Our time has run out, ja?”
Franz nodded, ashamed of having resisted for so long. Until the Nazis set Vienna ablaze, he had clung to his naive belief that their reign of terror was a dark but passing phase in history. That his countrymen would come to their collective senses. But his brother, Karl, had been right from the outset. Nothing, not even blood, would appease these crazed animals.
Franz gazed into Esther’s glistening eyes. Even though Karl was his only sibling and the best friend he had ever known, his loss paled compared with hers. Esther had no brothers or sisters, her parents were long dead, and Karl and she had been unable to conceive a child. Esther and Karl had only each other, but that had always been enough. Franz had never known a couple more deeply in love. He racked his brain for some consoling words, but none came to mind. His brother, the lawyer, had been the verbally gifted one. So Franz finished stitching in torturous silence. He was reaching for strips of a torn shirt to use as a bandage when he heard a plaintive scream. He froze, then rushed to the window.
“Vorsicht!” Esther cautioned. “Be careful! Don’t let them see you!”
Franz gently peeled back the edge of the drape, exposing only enough of a gap to peek out to the street below.
A group of stragglers—some were dressed in civilian clothing, others wore the brown shirts, matching caps, and bloodred swastika armbands of the storm troopers—milled about on the road like wolves circling their kill. In the center of them, an older woman lay sprawled on her back, flailing wildly. A blond woman in a long leather coat stood over her, pinning the fallen woman down with a foot to the chest.
Franz spotted a balding old man lying ten or so feet away. His torso was twisted unnaturally, with his knees facing in almost the opposite direction to his scrawny chest. A fat storm trooper hovered over him, holding a thick wooden club in his pudgy fingers. The trooper raised the club high over his head and let it hang suspended in the air for a long moment.
“No, no, no…,” Franz muttered.
The storm trooper swung the bat down like an ax into the victim’s midsection. Unconscious, possibly dead, the man didn’t respond. The woman shrieked again and was rewarded with a heavy kick.
The hair on Franz’s neck stood as he recognized the victims. “It’s the Yacobsens!”
Hannah loved visiting the Yacobsens’ bakery, at the end of their block. The kind old couple—“Tante Frieda” and “Onkel Moshe,” as his daughter called them—would shower the girl with delicious treats of strudel, pfitzauf, and linzer cake.
“Gott in Himmel!” Esther breathed from across the room. “What have they done?”
The fat storm trooper motioned to the blond woman. She grabbed Frieda by the wrist. The older woman resisted as best she could, but a second storm trooper sauntered over and jerked Frieda’s other arm back. She howled as though her shoulder had been dislocated. The two Nazis dragged the thrashing woman toward the fat storm trooper, who stood over her motionless husband, tapping his club against his open palm.
“How can they?” Franz croaked. “To an old woman? It’s madness!”
He watched the fat storm trooper cock his arm again. He pictured Karl’s swollen face and helpless eyes imploring him to act. Franz had never felt as impotent. Unable to stomach another moment, he spun from the window.
I must get Hannah!
Earlier, Franz had left his daughter at the neighboring apartment with the widowed Frau Lieberman before rushing out to retrieve Esther. After ushering his sister-in-law home through minefield-like streets, Franz had no choice but to suture her arm before she bled out. Now that he had closed the wound, he could not bear another minute apart from his daughter, who, though less than a hundred feet from him, felt worlds away.
Franz bolted for the door.
“No, Franz!” Esther cried after him. “Don’t go out now!”
“I can’t leave Hannah next door while the city burns.”
“Hannah is safe with Frau Lieberman!” Esther whispered. “We must not move right now. What if they are already inside the building? What if they hear you?”
“I will be quiet.”
“Franz, it’s too dangerous. Hannah is safer where she is.”
“I have to get her, Essie.”
“Just a little longer, Franz.” Her voice cracked. “For God’s sake, not now, of all times!”
Ignoring her protests, he opened the door. The dark hallway beyond was empty and silent. Holding his breath, Franz took a tentative step out the door. He glanced to either side and then took another.
“Papa?” a little voice mewed.
His heart almost stopped as he spied Hannah tiptoeing down the hall toward him. “Hannah!”
Behind his daughter, Franz saw a faint light emanating from a crack beneath the doorway to the neighboring apartment, and he sensed Frau Lieberman’s terrified presence. Franz padded toward Hannah, swept her up in his arms, and darted back into his flat. He pushed the door shut and gently clicked the dead bolt behind him.
Franz leaned over and smothered Hannah...
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
When circumstances lead us to...
By Ben Ziegler
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. This is a fascinating story of what happens when circumstances force people into places and situations they would not normally find themselves in.
I found Kalla's story personal, relevant and entertaining. Personal because it reminded me of how any of us can have our life turned upside down, leaving us with difficult decisions to make. Relevant because it speaks to the greatness of those places which welcome diversity, at all times (as did Shanghai in the 1940s... by being a refuge for 20,000 Jews escaping Nazi Germany), and entertaining... a storyline that nicely traverses an engaging mix of people, places and cultures.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Well researched but poorly written
By Sidney Young
I've always been fascinated by everything related to the World War II, so I was excited to find a story that not only took place in that era, but also shed light on a little known slice of WWII history. Unfortunately, despite the interesting setting and the amount of research that was obviously put into it, I found the "The Far Side of the Sky" to be a poorly written melodrama that did not quite do the story justice.
For Dr. Franz Adler, a Jewish surgeon and professor living in Vienna, his world fell apart on the night of the Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, when the Nazis went on a murderous rampage of Jews across Austria. Fearing for the safety of his family, Franz fled to Shanghai, China with his 8-year-old daughter, his sister-in-law, and an artist friend and became a volunteer at a refugee hospital for displaced Jews. It is while working at the refugee hospital that Franz meets Soon-Yi "Sunny" Mah, a Eurasian nurse for whom Franz feels an immediate attraction, and a host of other characters with whom his life will become interconnected. But just as the Nazis are cutting a swath of mass murder and political aggression across Europe, the Japanese Imperial Army is doing the same thing in China, unleashing a murderous rampage across the country and eventually seizing control of Shanghai. It wasn't long therefore before Franz and his friends found their lives being threatened again, as tensions mounts between the East and the West, and as the Nazis offer the Japanese a deal that may have horrific consequences not only for Franz and his family, but also for the 20,000 Jewish refugees seeking safe haven on The Far Side of the Sky.
It is obvious from the get-go that the author put a lot of effort into research this book. Through reading this book, I learned about the plight of the displaced Jewish refugees as they fought valiantly to find a place they call home, as well as the geo-political atmosphere of Shanghai during the late 1930's and early 1940's. It is really too bad, then, that the author's overwrought writing style and clichéd plotting made this book more of a period-piece melodrama than a serious work of historical fiction. Throughout the course of the book, Franz had to deal with the Nazis who want to kill him, the Japanese who want to kill him, fellow Jews who set him up because they're jealous his skill as a surgeon, as well as a myriad of other moral dilemmas that just happen to show up on the saintly Dr. Adler's doorstep. The author also appears to have no knack for conveying emotions other than to have the characters "cry" out everything so that towards the end of the book, we get dialogues in which "she cried" or "he cried" out something inane or another almost every other page. It's a wonder that any of the characters are still able to speak after the damage they do to their vocal chords on a daily basis.
The pacing is also a big problem with this book. The author is a Canadian doctor, so throughout the book we are treated with pages after pages of description of medical procedure while the key events in the characters' lives are glossed over. Often, we would get 20 pages or so of Franz Adler operating on a patient, then the chapter would end, and the next chapter would pick up 6-8 months later, and we would be told through 2 people's conversation what has happened to a certain character during the last 6-8 months. This method of "tell" not "show" applies to the central romance as well, so that instead of seeing Franz and Sunny interact in any kind of meaningful way, we are told again and again that they love each other when a supporting character would tell Franz that Sunny loved him or vice versa. Another issue I had was with the characterization of Dr. Franz Adler, who is supposed to be this loving father who is always striving to do the right thing, but who more often than not came off as a sanctimonious prig. One of the major plot lines in the book involved Franz's contentious relationship with a low-level German diplomat named Hermann Schwarzmann and much ado was made about how Schwarzmann's working for the German government is tantamount to abetting the atrocities that are being committed against the Jews. But after espousing this ideal, Franz wasted no time in turning around and befriending Colonel Kubota, who believes that the Japanese invasion of China is justified. This kind of double standard made it really difficult for me to root for Dr. Franz Adler throughout the rest of the book.
I could go on and on about a bunch of other stuff that bugs me about this book. But to summarize, this is a well-researched but poorly written book. You will be much more likely to enjoy it if you are a fan of Nicholas Sparks than Khaled Hosseini.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Jews in WWII
By Sharon K. Moxley
The Far Side of the Sky give me insight and information about the Jews who escaped to Shanghai during WWII. Although I have been a student of the Holocaust, I knew little about the Jews in Shanghai. A worthwhile read and a must read for those who study the Holocaust.
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