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This book examines Cuban society through a study of its detective fiction and more particularly contemporary Cuban society through the novels of the author and critic, Leonardo Padura Fuentes. The author traces the development of Cuban detective writing in the light of the work of twentieth century Western European literary critics and philosophers including Raymond Williams, Antonio Gramsci, Terry Eagleton, Roland Barthes, Jean Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jean François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard in order to gain a better understanding of the social and historical context in which this genre emerged. The analysis includes discussion of the broader philosophical, political and historical issues raised by the Cuban revolution. The book concludes that the study of this popular genre in Cuba is of crucial importance to the scholar who wishes to reach as full an understanding of the social dynamics within that society as possible.
Besides providing a thorough overview of advances in the concept of identity in Translation Studies, the book brings together a variety of approaches to identity as seen through the prism of translation. Individual chapters are united by the topic and their predominantly cultural approach, but they also supply dynamic impulses for the reader, since their methodologies, level of abstraction, and subject matter differ. The theoretical impulses brought together here include a call for the ecology of translational attention, a proposal of transcultural and farcical translation and a rethinking of Bourdieu’s habitus in terms of František Miko’s experiential complex. The book also offers first-hand insights into such topics as post-communist translation practices, provides sociological insights into the role politics played during state socialism in the creation of fields of translated fiction and the way imported fiction was able to subvert the intentions of the state, gives evidence of the struggles of small locales trying to be recognised though their literature, and draws links between local theory and more widely-known concepts.
The presence of bodies and sex in detective fiction has been a long-term feature of this internationally popular genre. Titillation is at the centre of narratives reliant upon discovery and revelation: motives and criminals are slowly revealed, along with sexualized and violated bodies – from femmes fatales to the corpses of victims. A satisfying, gratifying genre for its readership, the detective novel promises the disruption and subsequent restoration of order in societies tarnished by disillusionment which hope for a better future. This book takes as its focus examples of detective fiction from Cuba and Mexico during or in the aftermath of huge social upheaval (the Special Period and th...
Amusing look at provincial Brazilians and maintains as well a suspenseful narrative concerning a young boy's mysterious disappearance. Finally, Cuban author Arnaldo Correa's "The Man under the Ceiba Tree" subtly undermines the transparent approach of much socialist detective fiction of the postrevolutionary period. Like all good mystery and crime stories, these can be read simply for pleasure, as well as for the insights they offer into Latin American culture and.
Latin American Literature in Transition 1930-1980 explores the literary landscape of the mid-twentieth-century and the texts that were produced during that period. It takes four core areas of thematic and conceptual focus – solidarity, aesthetics and innovation, war, revolution and dictatorship, metropolis and ruins – and employs them to explore the complexity, heterogeneity and hybridity of form, genre, subject matter and discipline that characterised literature from the period. In doing so, it uncovers the points of transition, connection, contradiction, and tension that shaped the work of many canonical and non-canonical authors. It illuminates the conversations between genres, literary movements, disciplines and modes of representation that underpin writing form this period. Lastly, by focusing on canon and beyond, the volume visibilizes the aesthetics, poetics, politics, and social projects of writing, incorporating established writers, but also writers whose work is yet to be examined in all its complexity.
Essays in volume 18 include discussions of Cuba's approach to the Latin American debt crisis, its two-century-old race problem and its impact on Cuba's relations with Africa, differences between urban and rural living conditions and development, and the recent housing situation in Cuba. Examinations of scholarly research include a survey of major historical works on Cuba ofver the past twenty-five years and an analysis of how the revolution has affected the scholar's craft and access to manuscripts and archives. The Debate section features comments on discussions in Cuban Studies 17 of sex and gender relations in today's Cuba, as well as the ongoing issue of Cuba's economic planning and management system.
First Published in 2016. If scholarship on Cuban studies after the 1959 revolution focused on the historical and cultural aspects of the construction of a socialist order, the post-1989 crisis of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe raised questions about the island’s state as a socialist model. The scholarly gaze gradually began to focus on possibilities for alternative transformations at various levels of social life rather than on the deepening of traditional twentieth-century state socialism. This volume explores the newly emergent themes and debates about Cuban society and history.