Crime Fiction as World Literature

Description

While crime fiction is one of the most widespread of all literary genres, this is the first book to treat it in its full global is the first book to treat crime fiction in its full global and plurilingual dimensions, taking the genre seriously as a participant in the international sphere of world literature. In a wide-ranging panorama of the genre, twenty critics discuss crime fiction from Bulgaria, China, Israel, Mexico, Scandinavia, Kenya, Catalonia, and Tibet, among other locales. By bringing crime fiction into the sphere of world literature, Crime Fiction as World Literature gives new insights not only into the genre itself but also into the transnational flow of literature in the globalized mediascape of contemporary popular culture.

Louise Nilsson is a researcher in the English Department at Stockholm University, Sweden. David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, USA, where he is also Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. Professor Damrosch is one of the world's foremost authorities on World Literature, past President of the American Comparative Literature Association, and author or editor of 17 books, including the ground-breaking What Is World Literature? (2003; translated into seven languages). Among his other publications are How to Read World Literature (2009), The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh ( 2007), and World Literature in Theory (edited; 2014). Theo D'haen is Professor of English and American Literatures at K.U. Leuven, Belgium. He is the author or editor of 53 books, including American Literature: A History (2014), The Routledge Concise History of World Literature (2012), World Literature: A Reader (edited with Cesar Dominguez and Mads Rosendahl, 2013), A World History of Literature (2012), and The Routledge Companion to World Literature (edited with David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir, 2012).

An insightful comparative study ... Crime Fiction as World Literature carefully deconstructs the 'glocal' nature of a genre defined by a combination of rather fixed tropes reflecting local themes, which provide both unique and comfortingly recognizable atmospheres. * Recherche Litteraire * Crime Fiction as World Literature is a perfect introduction and a necessary text for students and scholars of crime fiction, as well as an important work for students and scholars of comparative and world literature. * Clues: A Journal of Detection * There is much to like in this volume ... The authors of the different chapters make their topics easily understandable to an audience not necessarily versed in the intricacies of the genre and at the same time offer genuine contributions that sometimes cut across several disciplinary lines. * Journal of European Studies * Here we have a study of crime fiction that, for once, is not satisfied with rounding up the usual suspects, but is fully aware that, like crime itself, crime fiction is a worldwide phenomenon. What is more, true to its 'world literature' perspective, this collection of essays has a close and rewarding look at the market mechanisms and the vicissitudes of translation without which crime novels (and novels in general) would be doomed to stay within their national orbits. * Hans Bertens, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and former President of the International Comparative Literature Association * Crime fiction is read around the world in many different languages, and now we have an excellent and comprehensive collection of critical essays on world crime literature for those with a taste for murder and mayhem. * Clive Bloom, Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies, Middlesex University, UK *