Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:39:49.085Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 14 - World Crime Fiction in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2022

Jesper Gulddal
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
Stewart King
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
Alistair Rolls
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, New South Wales
Get access

Summary

This chapter engages with the tensions between periphery and centre that are displayed by all forms of world crime fiction but that are especially telling in crime fiction in French. The notion of ‘French crime fiction’ is analysed, including the tensions inherent in Frenchness itself (the Francophone debate) and those between literature and genre fiction. Case studies include the nouveau roman, especially Michel Butor’s Passing Time, which stages the rules of crime fiction while simultaneously mapping them overseas; the nexus formed by Albert Camus’ The Outsider and Kamal Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation; the territorial and literary double spaces of Didier Daeninckx’s Murder in Memoriam; and questions of decapitation in Georges Simenon’s Maigret and the Headless Corpse and Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise. Additionally, the relationship between France, the Caribbean and Québec is traced in the genre-bending works of Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Fred Vargas and Anne Hébert. Through these texts, their points of intersection and their generic and geographical movements, crime fiction in French will be shown to exemplify the mobilities of world crime fiction.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×