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Russian Pulp - The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime (Hardcover, Annotated Ed)
Loot Price: R3,452
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Russian Pulp - The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime (Hardcover, Annotated Ed)
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The detektiv, Russia's version of the murder mystery, has conquered
what in Soviet days loved to call itself "the most reading nation
on earth." Most Russians don't read much Tolstoy, but they devour
the lurid covers and cheap paper of the detektivs by the millions.
Serials based on the works of two of the most popular authors
(Andrei Kivinov and Aleksandra Marinina) have been hits of the last
few TV seasons, their characters now a part of Russian everyday
life. The ubiquity of the detektiv may puzzle Westerners, who may
conclude that this is a post-Soviet import like McDonalds. Not
so-Russia sprouted its own versions of "penny dreadfuls" as soon as
peasants came off the land and learned to read. The guardians of
Russia's "high culture," however, were enraged by this pulpy
popular genre and so contrived under the Soviets to supress it,
making everyone read "improving" and "uplifting" literature
instead. Russia's junk readers hung on, though, snatching up the
few detektivs that made their way through censorship, until, in the
Gorbachev era, the genre blossomed as the perfect vehicle for
social criticism-the detektiv talked about social problems in a way
that was exciting enough that people wanted to read it. When the
Soviet Union finally collapsed, one of the few things left standing
in the rubble was the detektiv-which now is sold on every street
corner and read on every bus. The first full-length study of the
genre, Russian Pulp demonstrates that the detektiv is no knock-off.
Summarizing and quoting extensively from scores of novels, this
study shows that Russians understand law-breaking and crime,
policemen, and criminals in ways wholly different from those of the
West. After explaining why solving a crime is always a social
function in Russia, Russian Pulp examines the staples of crime
fiction-sex, theft, and murder-to demonstrate that Russians see
police officer and criminal, thief and victim, as part of a single
continuum. To the Russians,
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