Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture

ISBN-13: 9783039106981 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 315 str.

Opis

This book examines Cuban society through a study of its detective fiction and more particularly contemporary Cuban society through the novels of the author and critic, Leonardo Padura Fuentes.
The author traces the development of Cuban detective writing in the light of the work of twentieth century Western European literary critics and philosophers including Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Terry Eagleton, Roland Barthes, Jean Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jean Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard in order to gain a better understanding of the social and historical context in which this genre emerged.
The analysis includes discussion of the broader philosophical, political and historical issues raised by the Cuban revolution. The book concludes that the study of this popular genre in Cuba is of crucial importance to the scholar who wishes to reach as full an understanding of the social dynamics within that society as possible."

Recenzje

"Wilkinson's long-awaited study of detective fiction in Cuba will be celebrated by scholars who have been wondering just when his academic work would be available to the larger public." (Sophie Lavoie, Belphégor)

Spis treści

Contents: The relationship between literature and society: a theoretical framework - Nationalism, Marxism and sacrifice: Cuban revolutionary ideology and the Cuban state - Ideology and intervention: understanding Cuban revolutionary cultural policy - Bad black men and comical Chinese: the Cuban detective narrative 1915-1959 - Justice beyond legality: the early development of the revolutionary Cuban crime novel - Socialist heroes and capitalist villains: the Cuban revolutionary crime genre 1971-1991 - The crash of the 1990s and the challenge to modernity: how crime narrative changes to 'fit' the times - Irony, paradox and temporality: Sartrean morality in Pasado perfecto - Critiques of sexual and political intolerance in the novel Máscaras and the film Fresa y chocolate - From existentialism to postmodernity: the aestethic of doubt in Vientos de cuaresma and Paisaje de otoño.

O autorze

The Author: Stephen Wilkinson (1956) is a journalist, writer and academic who specialises in the study of Cuba. He began travelling to Cuba in 1986 and visits the island annually. He has written on Cuban politics and economics as well as completing a Ph.D. on the subject of this book, Cuban detective fiction.