Crime Fiction has been one of the popular genres for the South Asian reading public since colonial times. The simultaneous emergence of murder mysteries, detective fiction, thrillers in the metropolis as well as the colonies has been richly documented by the brilliant work done in Urdu, Hindi and Bangla by Naim (2023), Brueck and Orsini (2022), Roy (2020, 2017), Oesterheld (2009), Daeschel (2003) and others. Moving beyond arguments of imitative models into debates on the postcolonial in crime fiction, world crime fiction, gender in twentieth century crime writings, espionage narratives during the Cold War and more, this edited volume proposes to launch into broader yet interconnected themes of crime fiction in the regional languages and cartographies in South Asia. We broadly define the region as that of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The proposed volume will shift the focus away from anglocentric studies of crime fiction to explore the production, reception, and scholarship of crime fiction in the indigenous languages of South Asia since the 1950s. We seek chapters that address the following themes but are not necessarily restricted to them:
- Vernacular crime fiction in the shadow of the Cold War
- Crime fiction published in the early days of the young nations of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
- Women as actors, writers, and publishers in South Asian crime fiction
- Configurations of gender: women criminals, vamps, molls, and women detectives
- Urban crime or the city as the centre of crime and detection. How does the character of a metropolis interact with the mechanics of crime fiction?
- Migration and crime fiction in the late twentieth century
- Film and crime fiction (our primary interest is fiction)
- Translations, adaptations, and imitations
- Vernacular print cultures such as magazines and newspapers and crime fiction
- Readership and vernacular crime fiction
- Pulp fiction/Lowbrow fiction and crime fiction in regional languages
- Gothic and crime fiction in South Asia
Please send your abstracts (500 words) and a short bio-note (50 words) by March 15th to southasiancriminality@gmail.com. We will get back to you with our responses promptly by 1st April. If selected, full chapters (4,000 - 6,000 words) are to be submitted no later than 30th June, 2024. In case of any query do not hesitate to contact us on the email address provided.
Shweta Sachdeva Jha (Associate Professor, Department of English, Miranda House, University of Delhi),
Garima Yadav (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi)
