Detectar la nació. Una lectura perifèrica sobre la novel·la criminal i la condició postcolonial a Catalunya

This article examines the function of crime fiction in post-Franco, democratic Catalan culture. Drawing on postcolonial literary approaches to Catalan literature and culture, the article explores the ways in which writers and intellectuals actively produced crime fiction narratives as a means of overcoming a crisis in Catalan identity caused by the Castilian cultural and linguistic assimilation policies enacted by successive centralist regimes. The article examines the different narrative strategies typical to the genre that Catalan- and Castilian-language writers from Catalonia employed to resist the homogenising practices of the nation-state and to construct a particular Catalan community.