The Roman Noir in Post-War French Culture: Dark Fictions

by Claire Gorrara

Overview

Thrilling, absorbing, and full of bizarre plot twists and motivations, the roman noir is crime fiction at its most exciting. In this lively introduction to the post-war French roman noir, Claire Gorrara challenges preconceptions about the roman noir as little more than a populist form of crime fiction and examines how selected writers have appropriated it as a critical response to formative concerns and debates in post-war French society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199246090
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2003
Series:	Oxford Studies in Modern European Culture
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Claire Gorrara is Senior Lecturer in French at Cardiff University. She is author of French Women's Writing and the Occupation in Post-1968 France (Macmillan, 1998) and co-editor of European Memories of the Second World War (Berghahn, 1998) and France Since the Revolution: Texts and Contexts (Arnold, forthcoming 2003).

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Origins and beginnings: Léo Malet's 120, rue de la Gare (1943)2. Criminal Intentions: Film Noir and Les Diabioliques (1955)3. Counter-Cultural Politics: Jean-Patrick Manchette's Le Petit Bleu de la côte ouest (1976)4. Historical investigations: Didier Daenickx's Meurtres pour mémoire (1984)5. Telling Tales: Daniel Pennac's La Fée Carabine (1987)6. Feminist fictions: Maud Tabachnik's Un été pourri (1994)ConclusionSelect BibliographyIndex