The Shadow-Boxing Woman

by Inka Parei

Published 11 February 2011
 

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.


What Darkness Was

by Inka Parei

Published 17 May 2013
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.