Bad Cities: Literature and Urban Violence

Contemporary literature probes urban violence across cities, revealing evolving noir-influenced visions and consequences.

From Larry Kramer’s New York to Roth’s Newark and Colla’s Baghdad, this collection of 15 essays explores how American contemporary literature tackles the issue of urban violence, its relationship with the forerunners of the genre, and how its main features evolved over time. New critical perspectives on the subject are slowly disclosed, as the shadow of "noir" darkens the...