Oedipus solving the Riddle of the Sphynx -- the first
detective story. Image: Gustave Moreau, Oedipus
and the Sphynx

This topic looks at the mutations in the figure of the detective, as well as the novela negra, hard boiled and other crime genres, both in literature and film in the post-'Boom' period. As essential background reading, everyone studying this topic should be familiar with Jorge Luis Borges' "La muerte y la brújula".

Contents

• Lecture notes and handouts:
  • Lecture notes for Geoffrey Kantaris' lecture on Perder es cuestión de método and Soplo de vida
    • Handout with quotation extracts from Perder es cuestión de método (Word document)

• On-line resources
  • Version of Glen Close's "The Detective is Dead. Long Live the Novela negra!". For the full version, see the book Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Detective Fiction: Essays on the Género Negro Tradition
  • Mempo Giardinelli's "La novela negra en la América hispana", prologue to Lockhart, ed., Latin American Detective Fiction Writers
  • Borges, "El cuento policial" (conferencia, 1978)
  • Luis Ospina, "Mi último soplo", Revista Número 23 (1999)
  • The above and various interviews also available in the book Oiga/vea: sonidos e imágenes de Luis Ospina from Luis Ospina's web site
  • Quesada Gómez, Catalina, "Perder es cuestión de método: una poética del fracaso", Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 31.62 (2º semestre, 2005) pp. 265-80
  • Dove, Patrick, "Literary Futures: Crime Fiction, Global Capitalism and the History of the Present in Ricardo Piglia", A contracorriente 10.1 (2012) pp. 18-36.