Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons

Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons

Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico

Persephone Braham

An interpretation of the ideologies and kinships of detective fiction in Cuba and Mexico

192 Pages, 6 x 9 in

  • Paperback
  • 9780816641352
  • Published: February 5, 2004
BUY

Details

Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons

Detective Fiction in Cuba and Mexico

Persephone Braham

ISBN: 9780816641352

Publication date: February 5th, 2004

192 Pages

9 x 5

An interpretation of the ideologies and kinships of detective fiction in Cuba and Mexico

The transplanted, inherently modern detective genre serves as an especially effective lens for exposing the fissures and divergences of modernity in post-1968 Mexico and revolutionary Cuba.

Combining in-depth critical analyses with the theoretical insights of current literary and cultural theory and Latin American postmodern studies, Crimes against the State, Crimes against Persons shows how the Cuban novela negra examines the Revolution through an incisive chronicle of life under a decaying regime, and how the Mexican neopoliciaco reveals the oppressive politics of modernization and globalization in Latin America.

International in scope, comparative in approach, Braham’s study presents a unique inquiry into the ethical and aesthetic complexities that Latin American authors face in adapting genre detective fiction—a modern, metropolitan model—to radically diverse creative and ideological programs. Considering the work of writers such as Leonardo Padura Fuentes and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, as well as such English-language influences as G. K. Chesterton and Chester Himes, Braham also addresses Marxist critiques of the culture industry and emergent Latin American concepts of postmodernity.

Persephone Braham is assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Delaware.