scholarly journals A Cosmopolitan North in Nordic Noir: Turning Swedish Crime Fiction into World Literature

Author(s):  
Louise Nilsson ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart King

2020 ◽  
pp. 195-210
Author(s):  
Stewart King

This chapter reflects on the tension between national-focused and more worldly readings of crime fiction. It treats crime fiction as a form of world literature and examines new ways of conceiving relationships between crime writers, readers and texts that eschew the common categorization of a universal British-American tradition, on the one hand, and, on the other, localized national traditions. Following Jorge Luis Borges, the chapter argues that the transnationality of the crime genre does not reside exclusively within the text, but rather emerges through the interaction of the reader and the text. What emerges is a transnational and trans-historical reading practice that respects the local but also allows for innovative connections and new paradigms to be forged when texts are read beyond the national context.


Author(s):  
Darko М. Kovačević

Jo Nesbø is one of the most important and popular crimefiction writers of today, as well as a typical representative of thecontemporary literary genre known as Scandinavian crime fiction.Within the entire literary opus of this writer, the central positionis reserved for the series of novels in which detective Harry Hole isthe main character. Various segments and aspects of these novelsdemonstrate a strong connection and relation with popularculture, and they are identified and discussed in this article.However, before the mentioned identification and discussion,some facts are stated regarding the phenomena of Scandinaviancrime fiction, as a regionally determined literary genre whichemerged to the world literature scene in full power at the end ofthe 20th and the first decades of the 21st century, and its relation topopular culture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Roxana Eichel

Abstract Crime fiction is currently evolving towards a literary genre which encompasses the intertwining of several textual practices, rhetorical modes, cultural identities, and topoi. Multiculturalism and the relation to alterity are gradually conquering the realm of detective fiction, thus rendering the crime enigma or suspense only secondary in comparison to other intellectual “enjeux” of the text. Transgressing the national horizon, contemporary detective fiction in Romanian literature can be thus considered as “world literature” (Nilsson–Damrosch–D’haen 2017) not only because it does not engage representations of Romanian spaces alone but also due to its translatability, its transnational range of cultural values and practices. This article aims to discuss several categories of examples for this fresh diversity that Romanian crime fiction has encountered. Novels written recently by authors such as Petru Berteanu, Caius Dobrescu, Mihaela Apetrei, Alex Leo Şerban, or Eugen Ovidiu Chirovici employ variations such as either alternative narrators or cosmopolitan characters, or contribute to anthologies, writing directly in English in order to gain access to a more complex audience. The paper sets out to analyse the literary or rhetorical devices at work in these transgressional phenomena as well as their effects on contemporary Romanian crime narratives and their possible correlations to transnational phenomena.1


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