The Importance Of Place In Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction

An analysis of the relationship between detective fiction and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.

An analysis of the relationship between detective fiction and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last 20 years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country.

The crime genre entered Italy in the late nineteenth century, and if initially Italian authors followed models developed abroad—principally in the United States, England and France—a uniquely Italian brand began to emerge soon. Il giallo, as the crime genre has been known in Italy since the 1930s, proved to be the ideal instrument to confront pressing and often uncomfortable issues which were pertinent to the Italian context: it became a useful tool to restore, symbolically at least, the truth and justice that were, and still are, perceived by a large part of the Italian reading public to be systematically denied in reality. In today’s Italy, the crime genre, and particularly its noir sub-genre, narrates so that readers might remember, so that they might take heed and action, turning cognition into an act of resistance against oblivion and of rebellion against injustice. Uncertain Justice explores three broad areas that contemporary Italian noir literature appears particularly keen to debate, retrieving them from the silence to which they might otherwise be consigned: unresolved historical and political legacies, the repercussions of which still inform and affect life and practices in the present times; the problematic institution of the family, considered as the bedrock of Italian culture and the founding principle of Italian society, with specific attendant questions of gender politics; and the justice system seen through some of its operators, nominally in charge of putting the wrongs right and frequently accused of preventing this from happening. These explorations are conducted through an analysis of texts published in the last twenty years, which represent an effort to expose and counter injustice through the power of the word. Crime literature authors often revisit recent Italian history in their novels, and genre fiction plays a prominent role in acts of resistance against cover-ups or revisionist views of history. The volume starts with an analysis of this role, through novels that look back at the years of the fascist regime and, more recently, at the period from the anni di piombo onwards. It then considers the contribution made to the giallo and noir genre by women writers, looking at the effects that female practitioners in Italy have had on the ethics and aesthetics of a genre that, in other cultures, has traditionally been firmly conservative. A further section examines novels set in a familial context and looks at a range of family dynamics, expressed in the relationships between mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, large extended families or small nuclear ones. If some of the texts expose the devastating effects of the violence perpetrated “in the name of love,” others more positively offer hope, demonstrating how more desirable options do exist and can be pursued. Finally the volume looks at justice as a system and at its practitioners, as, in an interesting development peculiar to Italy, a significant number of judges, lawyers and senior police officers have recently become involved in crime fiction writing. The concluding chapter investigates the contribution that these “specialists,” who have extensive theoretical and technical knowledge in a field which crime fiction routinely frequents, can make to the genre; it also analyses whether these authors, who bring together the moral function of unveiling the truth (prerogative of the investigator) and the social function of rectifying a wrong (prerogative of the upholders of the law), may have a role in forming a more ethically and socially aware Italian citizen.

This book represents the first extended consideration of contemporary crime fiction as a European phenomenon. Understanding crime fiction in its broadest sense, as a transmedia practice, and offering unique insights into this practice in specific European countries and as a genuinely transcontinental endeavour, this book argues that the distinctiveness of the form can be found in its related historical and political inquiries. It asks how the genre’s excavation of Europe’s history of violence and protest in the twentieth century is informed by contemporary political questions. It also considers how the genre’s progressive reimagining of new identities forged at the crossroads of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality is offset by its bleaker assessment of the corrosive effects of entrenched social inequalities, political corruption, and state violence. The result is a rich, vibrant collection that shows how crime fiction can help us better understand the complex relationship between Europe’s past, present, and future. Seven chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book comprehensively covers the history of Italian crime fiction from its origins to the present. Using the concept of “moral rebellion,” the author examines the ways in which Italian crime fiction has articulated the country’s social and political changes. The book concentrates on such writers as Augusto de Angelis (1888–1944), Giorgio Scerbanenco (1911–1969), Leonardo Sciascia (1921–1989), Andrea Camilleri (b. 1925), Loriano Macchiavelli (b. 1934), Massimo Carlotto (b. 1956), and Marcello Fois (b. 1960). Through the analysis of writers belonging to differing crucial periods of Italy’s history, this work reveals the many ways in which authors exploit the genre to reflect social transformation and dysfunction.

This book is the first monograph in English that comprehensively examines the ways in which Italian historical crime novels, TV series, and films have become a means to intervene in the social and political changes of the country. This study explores the ways in which fictional representations of the past mirror contemporaneous anxieties within Italian society in the work of writers such as Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli, Francesco Guccini, Loriano Macchiavelli, Marcello Fois, Maurizio De Giovanni, and Giancarlo De Cataldo; film directors such as Elio Petri, Pietro Germi, Michele Placido, and Damiano Damiani; and TV series such as the “Commissario De Luca” series, the “Commissario Nardone” series, and “Romanzo criminale–The series.” Providing the most wide-ranging examination of this sub-genre in Italy, Barbara Pezzotti places works set in the Risorgimento, WWII, and the Years of Lead in the larger social and political context of contemporary Italy.

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.

The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction is a comprehensive introduction to crime fiction and crime fiction scholarship today. Across 45 original chapters, specialists in the field offer innovative approaches to the classics of the genre as well as ground-breaking mappings of emerging themes and trends. The volume is divided into three parts. Part I, Approaches, rearticulates the key theoretical questions posed by the crime genre. Part II, Devices, examines the textual characteristics of crime fiction. Part III, Interfaces investigates the complex ways in which crime fiction engages with the defining issues of its context – from policing and forensic science through war, migration and narcotics to digital media and the environment. Rigorously argued and engagingly written, the volume is indispensable both to students and scholars of crime fiction.