A Global Feast

 

It's good to see crime fiction alive and well and thriving in different parts of the world. I don't know about you, but sometimes I crave some good Thai, Indian, or Mexican cuisine, and so it goes with books.

Mike Nicol takes a look at what’s happening in the genre in Africa, even referring to a conference in Germany earlier this year titled Beyond Murder by Magic: Investigating African Crime Fiction. As Nichol points out, Africa’s got a thriving crime fiction genre but "you’re more likely to bump into African crime writers in Europe than you are anywhere south of the Limpopo."

Not to be outdone, Argentina has noir writers Guillermo Martínez and Pablo De Santis.  Martinez is is the author of eight novels including the international best seller Crímenes imperceptibles (The Oxford Murders), made into a movie by Spanish director Alex de la Iglesi aand starring Elijah Wood. De Santis jsut had his English-language debut with the whodunit The Paris Enigma, awarded last year’s first Premio Iberoamericano Planeta-Casa de América.

Much has been made about Icelandic crime fiction recently, with good reason. Since 1997 over 70 crime novels have been published by Icelandic authors (relative to population, that’s the equivalent of 15,000 crime novels being published every year in the UK. Why the goldrush? As Iceland Review says, "As paranoia and xenophobia are on the up, fear’s selling like never before and the Icelandic reading public’s appetite for murder and mayhem has never been keener. With a slew of new home-grown crime novels coming out every year, this trend looks like more than a passing fad. The Icelandic thriller is here to stay!"

Mahmud Rahman wrote recently about pulp fiction in Bangladesh. One fascinating note to those of who've become accustomed to a more disinterested reading populace in the U.S., Rahman talks about people eager to get into the 2007 book fair and waiting in lines sometimes stretching for half a mile. Major newspapers carry weekly literary pages with original writing and essays. The papers and magazines also publish thick holiday specials carrying fiction, memoir, and poetry that sell out within days of their publication. Ah, if only...

Omnivoracious applauded Akashic Books and its noir anthology series with three "exotic noir" books to date:  Trinidad Noir edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason, Paris Noir edited by Aurelien Masson, and Istanbul Noir edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler.

Bon appétit!