Groundless Noir

Ontology and Latin American Crime Fiction

By: Erik Larson

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Hardcover | 12 May 2026

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Hardcover

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22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8

Hardcover

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This philosophical study of Latin American noir fiction poses the question, What if precarity and uncertainty aren't just themes of the genre but ways of being in the world? Emerging from a region immersed in violence, trauma, and political instability, the novela negra reveals not just disillusionment but a desire to adapt to, even dwell within, chaos. In the hands of writers like Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, and Patricia Melo, savvy detectives and antiheroes navigate a world in which meaning constantly shifts and certainty is elusive. Blending literary analysis with philosophical inquiry, Larson draws on Heideggerian ontology to demonstrate how the noir novel becomes a mode of existence—grounded in its very groundlessness. Rather than offering resolution, these novels embody a paradoxical desire: to engage crisis while also adapting to it. In doing so, they become both ideological and pedagogical—existential fiction for an uncertain world.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

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