Title: The importance of place in Italian crime fiction
Description: By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel 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. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the ‘urban sprawl’, and islands are represented in the serial novels of 11 of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, this book articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new ‘social novel’.
 

For more information, please see: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781611475524
Subjects: Setting (Literature), Italian Detective and mystery stories, Place (Philosophy) in literature, History and criticism, Cities and towns in literature, Italian fiction, Detective and mystery stories, history and criticism, Italian fiction, history and criticism
Places: Milan, Turin, Bologna, Naples, Palermo, Sardinia, Sicily, North-East
People: Andrea Camilleri, Massimo Carlotto, Piero Colaprico, Sandrone Dazieri, Marcello Fois, Carlo Lucarelli, Santo Piazzese, Andrea G. Pinketts, Massimo Siviero, Piero Soria, Bruno Ventavoli
Time periods: 20th century