Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in Historical Crime Fiction
This is the first book- length academic study of the portrayal in contemporary historical crime fiction of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and their legacies. It discusses novels written by five authors: David Downing, Philip Kerr, Luke McCallin, Joseph Kanon and David Thomas. Their work belongs to a subgenre of the historical crime novel that has emerged since the late 1980s to become a significant body of writing located at the intersection of crime fiction and Holocaust literature. The readings of these novels explore questions of form and genre to ask how popular fiction might approach the Holocaust. Themes of resistance and complicity and the relationship between them, and problems of guilt and responsibility are also discussed. This book also explores questions of justice to show how these novels explore social and moral justice, and vengeance and revenge, as alternatives to ordinary legal justice after the Holocaust.
Anthony Lake has taught at universities in his native United Kingdom, Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and China. He is currently Visiting Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University or Roehampton. He has published articles on a number of authors including Joseph Kanon and Philip Kerr.