Germany in the 1950s: A young man travels by train and ship to a sanatorium on a remote North Sea island. He is suffering from a lung disease, and each day could be his last. While the country eagerly and blindly dedicates itself to reconstruction and the economic miracle, time seems to stand still in the enchanting isolation of the sanatorium. Surrounded by the relentless forces of nature from the sea and wind, the residents of the sanatorium "on the other side of the world" are left to confront life and death – and a storytelling that must not end: Interwoven memories of forgotten fates and a distant world of new upstarts and old opportunists, fortune seekers, outsiders, and "originals" searching for their niches in life. With this immense novel, Forte creates a narrative cosmos.