Was my father a spy and a killer?

Questioning her family past draws middle-aged Mari right in the centre of Nokia’s shady trades with the Soviet Union and the legacy of the Cold War lies.

Mari’s father was Michael Albright, an American businessman who moved to Helsinki in the early 1980’s, set up a family and a successful career, but returned to the States with his new mistress at the end of the decade.

Or at least this is the story as Mari knows it.

Michael’s real name is Edward and he was sent to Helsinki as a CIA undercover agent in 1980. He got involved in a deceivingly clever double-scheme, where the frontmen of Nokia played both the Soviets and the Americans, resulting in a secret operation on a wintry night in 1988. An operation that went horribly wrong.

When Mari finds out that Michel Albright never really existed, everything she has known about herself, family, and love start to crumble.

Events in the provincial Helsinki cabinets and private parties, and decisions taken during negotiations in saunas and snowed-in cottages, sent shockwaves all the way to the core of the superpower politics.

Cold War Affairs is a contemporary and imaginative take on the bold schemes behind the Cold War politics and their life-changing effects on individuals and families, echoing the present interest in the personal life of a spy in popular TV-series like Homeland and Le Bureau. Skillfully staged by a young talented author who remoulds the tradition of the Cold War spy novels by masters like John Le Carré and Graham Greene, with a nod to The Innocent by Ian McEwan.