A Shot Across the Bow

On the eve of WW1 Harry Haller, a Berlin journalist, takes up a new post in Constantinople. The Ottoman capital is a center of intrigue and strongly under German influence. Young, inexperienced Haller turns to the representative of the Zionist Organization for orientation. Yet he quickly makes an enemy of an irrepressible con man. In Palestine, he visits German and Jewish settlements. When the ruthless purge of Armenians in Turkey begins the Zionist leader fears the same fate for the Jews of Palestine and looks to the German ambassador for help. Haller and the con man are both expelled from Constantinople but they met again in turbulent, post-war Berlin. Bolstered by recent experiences, Haller again insists to his family that Germany holds no future for Jews. Meanwhile, a secretive Armenian group tracks down and kills Talaat Pasha, the man it holds responsible for unleashing the purge. The sensational trial of the assassin convinces Haller that the prosecutor is not interested in a conviction. But Haller has information that could leave the jury no choice. Peppery Winds, an earlier novel by Lorenz Waldmann, takes an Alexandrian Greek and a Palestinian Jew to India in the 1st century CE in search of black pepper - worth its weight in gold to the Romans.