"Steve Weiner's new novel follows the trajectories of four sailors and the owner of a German merchant ship, Yellow Sailor, which sets sail from Hamburg in 1914. After the ship wrecks in shallow water, the men drift their separate ways, with each man's journey across a desolate wartime European landscape becoming an exploration of the failure of love, sex, religion, and friendship. Julius Bernai, owner of the ship and frankly homosexual, checks into an institute for nervous disorders and falls in love with a doctor's fiancee. Nicholas Bremml drifts: from an oil tanker called Erwartung - Expectation - to the beds of numerous prostitutes to Prague's Jewish market, where he sells magic spells. Brothers Karl and Alois are equally rudderless and Jacek, the electrician, goes to work in the mines, where a fourteen-year-old Polish boy commits a macabre murder."--BOOK JACKET.