Detective Fiction in the East

Abstract

This study aims to shed light on some of the reasons behind the relative undersupply of crime fiction during communism. The article departs from the commercial nature of crime fiction and exposes the way in which its proliferation corresponded, in Western Europe, to the exponential increase in literacy at the end of the 19th century. Further on, the text addresses the mechanisms that dominated the Romanian publishing industry during the communist regime and how the paternalistic control exerted by the state apparatus virtually eliminated both translated crime fiction, as well as local renditions of foreign plots, whose ideological background were deemed incompatible to socialist society. Lastly, the present study focuses on post-communist evolutions in the book market, especially with respect to popular literature, whose import to East and Central-European countries reveals crucial contemporary cultural hierarchies.