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In The Shadow-Boxing Woman, a novel from German writer Inka Parei,
a decaying apartment building in post-Wall Berlin is home to Hell,
a young woman with a passion for martial arts. When Hell's neighbor
disappears she sets out across the city in search of the woman. In
the course of her quest, she falls in love with a bank robber,
confronts her own dark memories, and ends up saving more than just
her missing neighbor. What is on the surface a crime novel is
actually a haunting dual portrait of a city and a woman caught up
in times of change and transition. This debut novel in English
combines Parei's tight prose with a compulsive delight in detail
that dynamically evokes many lost and overlooked corners of Berlin.
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The Cold Centre (Paperback)
Inka Parei; Translated by Katy Derbyshire
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R307
R197
Discovery Miles 1 970
Save R110 (36%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Inka Parei's novel The Cold Centre begins with a man who receives a
startling call from his ex-wife. She's in the hospital, awaiting a
cancer diagnosis. His mind races as he suddenly realizes he must
find out whether she was contaminated by fallout from the 1986
Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Quickly returning to the city, he tries
to reconstruct the events of a few days so many years ago, and he
revisits and questions his own memories of working in the chilling
"cold centre"-the air conditioning plant for the East German party
newspaper. Did she come in contact with a contaminated truck from
the Ukraine? Was he a cog at the heart of the system, failing to
prevent a tragic accident? Can he find out what happened before
it's too late? He soon begins to lose control over his days in
Berlin, entering into a desperate search for orientation over a
fracture in his own life-one he has never gotten over. Written in
Parei's characteristically precise prose, The Cold Centre is a
timely reminder of how we react to accidents-nuclear and otherwise-
and a bleakly realistic description of East Berlin before the Wall
fell. Its tight and dizzying structure keeps readers on the edge of
their seats as the narrator tries to solve his mystery.
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What Darkness Was (Paperback)
Inka Parei; Translated by Katy Derbyshire
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R306
R196
Discovery Miles 1 960
Save R110 (36%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Close to death, an old man collapses and struggles to his bed. The
sounds of the endless night unsettle him, triggering images,
questions, and memories. In What Darkness Was, Inka Parei, author
of The Shadow-Boxing Woman, allows the reader to inhabit a singular
German mind. Precise and observant-but uncomprehending and on the
brink of hysteria-the old man wracks his brain as the questions
flow like water: why did he inherit the building he now lives in?
Why did he leave the city that was his home for so long? Is he even
here voluntarily? And who was that suspicious stranger on the
stairs? Lying in bed, the old man is aware that these questions may
be the last puzzles he ever solves. Combining tight prose with a
compulsive delight in detail, Parei's second novel in English
presents a dynamic portrait of the West German soul from World War
II through the German Autumn of 1977.
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