The Foreign in International Crime Fiction: Transcultural Representations

257 Pages·2012·1.229 MB·English

by  Jean Anderson (editor), Carolina Miranda (editor), Barbara Pezzotti (editor)

The Foreign in International
Crime Fiction
Related Titles
Adapting Detective Fiction, Neil McCaw
Crime Culture, Edited by Bran Nicol, Patricia Pulham and Eugene McNulty
The Foreign in International
Crime Fiction
Transcultural Representations
Edited by Jean Anderson,
Carolina Miranda and Barbara Pezzotti
Continuum International Publishing Group
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11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Jean Anderson, Carolina Miranda, Barbara Pezzotti and Contributors, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-2817-1
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-7703-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The foreign in international crime fiction : transcultural representations/edited by
Jean Anderson, Carolina Miranda and Barbara Pezzotti.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-2817-1 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4411-7703-2 (pdf) –
ISBN 978-1-4411-8198-5 (ePub)
1. Detective and mystery stories–History and criticism. 2. Immigrants in literature.
3. Other (Philosophy) in literature. 4. Noir fiction–History and criticism. 5. Crime
writing. I. Anderson, Jean, 1951- II. Miranda, Carolina. III. Pezzotti, Barbara.
PN3448.D4F57 2012
809.3’872--dc23 2011051840
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Part One: Inside Out or Outside In? The Scene of
the Crime as Exotic Décor
Chapter 1 Cannibalistic Māori Behead Rupert Murdoch:
(Mis)representations of Antipodean Otherness
in Caryl Férey’s ‘Māori Thrillers’ 9
Ellen Carter and Deborah Walker-Morrison
Chapter 2 ‘A Desk is a Dangerous Place from which to Watch
the World’: Britishness and Foreignness in Le
Carré’s Karla Trilogy 22
Sabine Vanacker
Chapter 3 Havana Noir: Time, Place and the Appropriation
of Cuba in Crime Fiction 35
Philip Swanson
Chapter 4 Shanghai, Shanghai: Placing Qiu Xiaolong’s Crime
Fiction in the Landscape of Globalized Literature 47
Luo Hui
Chapter 5 Seeing Double: Representing Otherness
in the Franco-Pacific Thriller 60
Jean Anderson
vi Contents
Part Two: Private Eyes, Hybrid Eyes: The In-Between Detective
Chapter 6 ‘Don’t Forget the Tejedor’: Community and
Identity in the Crime Fiction of Rosa Ribas 75
Stewart King
Chapter 7 An American in Paris or Opposites Attract: Dominique
Sylvain’s ‘In-Between’ Bicultural Detective Stories 87
France Grenaudier-Klijn
Chapter 8 Arthur Upfield and Philip McLaren: Pioneering
Partners in Australian Ethnographic Crime Fiction 99
John Ramsland and Marie Ramsland
Chapter 9 From Wolf to Wolf-Man: Foreignness and
Self-Alterity in Fred Vargas’s L’Homme à l’envers 112
Alistair Rolls
Chapter 10 Others Knowing Others: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium
Trilogy and Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow 124
Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas
Chapter 11 Smog, Tweed and Foreign Bedevilment:
Bourland’s Twenty-First-Century Remake of
the Sherlock Holmes Crime Story 137
Keren Chiaroni
Part Three: When Evil Walks Abroad – Towards a Politics of Otherness
Chapter 12 ‘The Meanest Devil of the Pit’: British Representations
of the German Character in Edwardian Juvenile
Spy Fiction, 1900–14 153
Andrew Francis
Chapter 13 Reading Others: Foreigners and the Foreign
in Roberto Arlt’s Detective Fiction 165
Carolina Miranda
Chapter 14 Who is the Foreigner? The Representation of
the Migrant in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction 176
Barbara Pezzotti
Contents vii
Chapter 15 Images of Turks in Recent German Crime Fiction:
A Comparative Case Study in Xenophobia 188
Margaret Sutherland
Chapter 16 The Representation of Chinese Characters in
Leonardo Padura’s La Cola de la Serpiente (2000):
Sinophobia or Sinophilia? 200
Carlos Uxó
Bibliography 213
Index 231
Acknowledgements
Editing a volume such as the present one is a demanding task, and the editors
would like to acknowledge here the efforts of the many people who assisted,
from contributing authors and administrative staff to editorial expert Heather
Elder. We are especially grateful to the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, and the School of Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand, for support received.
Contributors
Jean Anderson is associate professor of French at Victoria University of
Wellington. She works mainly in the fields of French Pacific literature and
contemporary and fin-de-siècle women’s writing. She is also a literary translator:
her most recent publication is Ananda Devi’s Indian Tango (2011).
Paula Arvas received her PhD from the University of Helsinki in 2009. In her
dissertation, she analyses Finnish crime fiction of the 1940s. Together with
Andrew Nestingen, she has edited a collection of articles: Scandinavian Crime
Fiction (2010). She has written several articles about crime fiction and her non-
academic publications include a crime fiction cookbook.
Ellen Carter is a doctoral student at the University of Auckland and the École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Her interests lie in the fields of
French crime fiction, cultural studies and reader reception.
Keren Chiaroni is senior lecturer in French at Victoria University. Her special ties
include the history of design for performance and cultural links between France
and New Zealand. Her latest book is The Last of the Human Freedoms (2011).
Andrew Francis is a Wellington, New Zealand-based researcher. His interests
include the New Zealand home front during the First World War, the history of
British imperial advertising and British film propaganda of the Second World
War. He is currently writing a book on the treatment of enemy aliens in New
Zealand during the First World War.
France Grenaudier-Klijn is senior lecturer and French subject convenor at
Massey University, New Zealand. Her main research interests are in the fields of
post-Holocaust representation, French crime fiction and fin-de-siècle women’s
writing. She is also an academic and literary translator. She is currently working
on a book on the function of femininity in Patrick Modiano’s work.
Luo Hui teaches Chinese language and literature at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. His research focuses on the concept of ‘minor