Description
Book SynopsisFrench crime fiction and the Second World War explores France''s preoccupation with memories of the Second World War through an examination of popular culture in one of its most enduring forms: crime fiction. A populist literary form, French crime fiction offers fascinating insights into past and present perceptions of the war years in France, as well as the role that popular culture has played in both shaping and reflecting cultural memories of the Occupation. By analyzing representations of the war years in a selection of French crime novels from the late 1940s to the 2000s, this study contends that such texts open up new avenues for charting the two-way traffic between official discourses and popular reconstructions of such a contested conflict in French cultural memory. Starting with narratives of the Resistance in the late 1940s and concluding with contemporary crime fiction for younger readers, this study examines popular memories of the Second World War in dialogue with the chan
Trade Review'This rich and closely argued study is a most valuable addition to our historical understanding of social and cultural memories of the war and the reworkings of the themes of crime, guilt and responsibility over the decades.'
Margaret Atack, French History, March 2013, 27, 1
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Table of ContentsIntroduction: mapping French memories of the Second World War
1. Resisters and the resistance: challenging the epic in French crime fiction of the 1940s and 1950s
2. Forgotten crimes: representing Jewish wartime experience in French crime fiction of the 1950s and 1960s
3. Resurgent collaboration: revisiting collaboration in French crime fiction of the 1980s
4. Survivor stories: representing persecution and extermination in French crime fiction of the 1980s and 1990s
5. Mobilising memory: reading the Second World War in children’s crime fiction of the 1990s and 2000s
Conclusion: Memories past, present and future
Bibliography
Index
