Moving Worlds: Crime Across Cultures

 I recently wrote an article called “Interrogations of Society in Contemporary African Crime Writing” for a special edition of the journal Moving Worlds. Crime Across Cultures, edited by Lucy Evans and Mandala White, “seeks to examine how discourses of crime and criminality are produced in a global context that extends well beyond the cloisters of Orwell’s English middle class. We ask how writers and cultural practitioners from around the world have diversified the crime writing genre, moving beyond the detective novel in order to experiment with a variety of media including short fiction, television, performance, visual art and graffiti.” My article examines the conflicted role of black detective figures in the novels of Botswana writer Unity Dow, Ghanaian-born crime writer Kwei Quartey and South African writers James McClure and Deon Meyer.  I look at criminals who are casualties of wider traumas, cultural rifts, established systems of control and deeply embedded belief. For more about this special issue of Moving Worlds, go to: http://www.movingworlds.net/