Mediterranean Crime Fiction : Transcultural Narratives in and around the ‘Great Sea'

Barbara Pezzotti offers new ways of reading established crime novelists, such as Andrea Camilleri, Jean-Claude Izzo and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and less well-known writers, such as Yasmina Khadra and Batya Gur. By exploring the transcultural nature of Mediterranean crime fiction, this study advocates for a regional 'reading' of the genre.

Contributing to the growing debate around the definition of Mediterranean noir, Barbara Pezzotti's groundbreaking study is the first in English to propose a rigorous classification of Mediterranean crime fiction. Intersecting crime fiction studies and Mediterranean studies, this interdisciplinary book provides a coherent and stringent definition in which the Mediterranean setting is not in the background, but is a meaningful arena where transnational space, globalisation and environmental issues are discussed; questions of regional, national and transcultural identity are investigated; and the themes of gender and violence are tackled. Pezzotti offers new ways of reading established crime novelists, such as Andrea Camilleri, Jean-Claude Izzo and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, alongside less well-known writers. To date, no other book-length study has taken a transnational and transcultural approach to these authors, and here Pezzotti invites us to consider the wider Mediterranean dimensions of their crime narratives, beyond their national contexts.