Scandinavian Crime Fiction

Description

With its bleak urban environments, psychologically compelling heroes and socially engaged plots, Scandinavian crime writing has captured the imaginations of a global audience in the 21st century. Exploring the genre's key themes, international impact and socio-political contexts, Scandinavian Crime Fiction guides readers through such key texts as Sjoewall and Wahloeoe's Novel of a Crime, Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum series, Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Henning Mankell's Wallander books, Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy and TV series such as The Killing. With its focus on the function of crime fiction in both reflecting and shaping the late-modern Scandinavian welfare societies, this book is essential for readers, viewers and fans of contemporary crime writing.

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen is Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Literature at University College London, UK. His previous publications include (as co-editor) World Literature, World Culture: History, Theory, Analysis (2008).

[In] this exemplary study ... [themes] are treated with an analytical precision that both anatomises the key elements for those new to the genre and finds myriad new insights for old hands like myself. Scandinavian Crime Fiction becomes, at a stroke, a key work in the ongoing analysis of Nesbo, Larsson, Fossum, Mankell & Co., crammed with acute observation from a man whose knowledge and understanding of the genre is nonpareil. * Crime Time * No cultural phenomenon of our times is more important than Nordic noir, its origins, its continuing existence and appeal, the needs it meets. All these Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen addresses with searching intelligence and sharp moral awareness... It is precisely through the intensity of this author's approach to his subject that its universality becomes apparent: the interconnectedness of geography, politics, social composition and the arts, and the indomitable, demanding presence of crime in even the best-intentioned milieus. A fascinating and distinguished book, and a necessary one too. * Paul Binding, Author and Critic *