Scandinavian Crime Fiction

by Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Katy Shaw (Editor)

Overview

With its bleak urban environments, psychologically compelling heroes and socially engaged plots, Scandinavian crime writing has captured the imaginations of a global audience in the 21st century. Exploring the genre's key themes, international impact and socio-political contexts, Scandinavian Crime Fiction guides readers through such key texts as Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Novel of a Crime, Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum series, Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Henning Mankell's Wallander books, Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy and TV series such as The Killing. With its focus on the function of crime fiction in both reflecting and shaping the late-modern Scandinavian welfare societies, this book is essential for readers, viewers and fans of contemporary crime writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472522757
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/12/2017
Series:	21st Century Genre Fiction
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen is Lecturer in Scandinavian Literature at University College London, UK. His previous publications include (as co-editor) World Literature, World Culture: History, Theory, Analysis.

Katy Shaw is Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Her previous publications include David Peace: Texts and Contexts and Mining the Meaning: Cultural Representations of the 1984-5 UK Miners' Strike.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Scandinavian crime fiction and the welfare state
2. Welfare crime: Sjöwall and Wahlöö's Novel of a Crime
3. The hardboiled social worker: Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum
4. Crime fiction in an age of crisis: Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers and Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Landscape and memory in the criminal periphery
6. Criminal peripheries: Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for snow and Kerstin Ekman's Blackwater
7. Investigating the family in the welfare state
Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

[In] this exemplary study ... [themes] are treated with an analytical precision that both anatomises the key elements for those new to the genre and finds myriad new insights for old hands like myself. Scandinavian Crime Fiction becomes, at a stroke, a key work in the ongoing analysis of Nesbo, Larsson, Fossum, Mankell & Co., crammed with acute observation from a man whose knowledge and understanding of the genre is nonpareil.” —Crime Time

“No cultural phenomenon of our times is more important than Nordic noir, its origins, its continuing existence and appeal, the needs it meets. All these Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen addresses with searching intelligence and sharp moral awareness… It is precisely through the intensity of this author's approach to his subject that its universality becomes apparent: the interconnectedness of geography, politics, social composition and the arts, and the indomitable, demanding presence of crime in even the best-intentioned milieus. A fascinating and distinguished book, and a necessary one too.” —Paul Binding, Author and Critic

From the Publisher