In 1971, when the Cuban government launched the Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution Crime Fiction award, local literary critics were acutely aware of the genre’s roots in a capitalist setting. Yet, José Antonio Portuondo considered that crime fiction could serve a purpose within a Communist framework of life, provided it underwent adaptation to suit the new context. Over the following years, Cuban journals published numerous programmatic texts aimed at guiding writers willing to produce what would be termed Revolutionary crime fiction. Similar adjustments took place in other Soviet bloc countries, albeit with varying degrees of success and popularity. While crime fiction from the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Hungary are perhaps the most well-known cases, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia also produced significant crime narratives. At the same, however, some Communist leaders loathed the genre: Stalin deemed it “the most naked expression of bourgeois society’s fundamental ideas on property” and Mao banned crime fiction.

Simultaneously, several prominent crime fiction writers from Capitalist backgrounds have identified themselves as Communists at various points in their lives, including Dashiell Hammett, Ed Lacy, Andrea Camilleri, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö, Henning Mankell, Frédéric Fajardie, Thierry Jonquet, among others.

Likewise, a number of Marxist thinkers have analysed the genre. Antonio Gramsci, for instance, included some reflections on detective fiction in his Prison Notebooks, while Trotskyite author Ernest Mandel extensively explored the genre in his Delightful Murder. A Social History of the Crime Story (curiously omitting any mention of crime fiction from the Soviet Bloc). More recently, Stephen Knight has established the relationship between social ideology and genre conventions and Slavoj Žižek has discussed Swedish crime fiction.

Despite all of this, the relationship between crime fiction and Communism remains largely understudied and lacks comprehensive analysis.We are compiling a collection of essays that seek to address the intersection of Communism and crime fiction narratives. Essays with a multinational approach, and dealing with crime fiction generated outside Anglo-American areas are encouraged. Survey essays are discouraged. Possible areas of research may include, but are not limited, to:

• Crime fiction written in communist areas

• Crime fiction by communist authors living in capitalist areas

• Crime fiction set in communist areas

• Crime fiction dealing with communist to-post communist transition

• Approaches to crime fiction by Marxist thinkers

• International circulation of communist crime fiction

• Crime television series in communist countries 

• Crime fiction that deals with the idea of youth and communism

• Youth literature, crime fiction and communism

Advice for contributors

If you are interested in contributing to this collection, we ask that you submit an abstract of up to 300 words explaining the focus and approach to your proposed essay. Include an author bio of 200 words listing your current professional affiliation as well any relevant previous publications and other qualifications. Each final contribution should be around 7000 words, including bibliography. 

Abstracts should be emailed to carlos.uxo@monash.edu or isabel.story@ntu.ac.uk 

Abstract submission deadline: 15 September 2024.

Authors notified of acceptance: 29 November 2024. 

Full paper submission deadline: 1 April 2025.

About the editors

Dr Carlos Uxo is Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of El género policial en Cuba: Novela policial revolucionaria, neopolicial y teleseries (Peter Lang: 2021), and editor of The Detective Fiction of Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Manchester Metropolitan University: 2006). He has also published close to fifty academic articles and book chapters, including “Cuban Crime Fiction: A Literature for the (Communist) Masses” (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2019) and “Crime Fiction and Authoritarianism” (Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, 2020).

Dr Isabel Story is Senior Lecturer in Visual Communications at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is the author of Soviet Influence on Cuban Cultural Institutions 1961-1987 (Lexington 2019) and has edited books on Cuban disaster preparedness (Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change in Cuba, 2021) and social politics (Cuba’s Forgotten Decade, 2018). She specialises in the international projection of Cuban culture and in particular in cultural relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union and East Germany, the role of cultural heritage, and international collaboration.