Reading The Cold Centre
A Novel by Inka Parei
Inka Parei’s novel 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 realises he must find out whether she was contaminated by fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Quickly running to Berlin, he tries to reconstruct the events of a few days so many years ago, and he revisits and questions his memories of working in the chilling “cold centre” – the air-conditioning plant for the East German Communist Party newspaper. Did she come into 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 is too late? The Cold Centre is a timely reminder of how we react to accidents – and a bleakly realistic description of East Berlin before the Wall fell.
Source: Seagull Books, 2014
Excerpts from the novel will be read in both English and German.