Crime Fiction in and Around the Eastern Mediterranean

Book excerpt: For a long time, crime fiction has been considered popular literature - an assessment that prevented serious critical engagement with it. It is only in recent years that critical literary theories have begun to be applied to genres such as crime fiction, while at the same time the interest of literary scholars in crime fiction by authors not belonging to the European-American 'Western' cultures has grown. The articles assembled in this volume seek to address the role of crime fiction in and around the Eastern Mediterranean in countries such as Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Saudi-Arabia, and Egypt, focusing on generic, terminological, literary critical, social, and cultural themes. The book is intended to be an invitation for literary scholars doing research on different literatures of the Eastern Mediterranean to compare and discuss their results and to engage in further research in this field.