Document Type
Article
Version
Final Published Version
Publication Title
Hispania
Volume
92
Publication Date
5-2009
Abstract
Abstract: Focusing on Leonardo Padura Fuentes's hard-boiled fiction, this essay traces the origin and evolution of the genre in Cuba. Padura Fuentes has challenged the officially sanctioned socialist literatura policial became popular in the 1970s and 1980s, creating a new model of criticism that is not afraid to confront island's socio-economic problems. This article analyzes how in this novelist's tetralogy, the dominating rhetoric is one of scarcity, and how this constant state of lacking builds on the formulaic elements detective genre to reveal a social reality where crime (and its resolution) do not always have to do with discovery of a dead.
Publisher's Statement
Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Hispania, Volume 92, Issue 2, 2009, pages 234-243.
Citation
Song, R. 2009. Hard-Boiled for Hard Times in Leonardo Padura Fuentes’s Detective Fiction. Hispania. 92.2: 234-43.