Blood on the Table ― Essays on Food in International Crime Fiction

Written from a multicultural and interdisciplinary perspective, this collection of new essays explores the semiotics of food in the 20th and 21st century crime fiction of authors such as Anthony Bourdain, Arthur Upfield, Sara Paretsky, Andrea Camilleri, Fred Vargas, Ruth Rendell, Stieg Larsson, Leonardo Padura, Georges Simenon, Paco Ignacio Talbo II, and Donna Leon. The collection covers a range of issues, such as the provision of intra-, per- or paratextual recipes, the aesthetics and ethics of food, eating rituals as indications of cultural belonging and regional, national and supranational, and eating disorders and other seemingly abnormal habits as signs of “otherness.” Also mentioned are the television productions of the Inspector Montalbano series (1999–ongoing), the Danish-Swedish Bron/Broen (2011 The Bridge), and its remakes The Tunnel (2013, France/UK) and The Bridge (2013, USA).

Jean Anderson is associate professor of French at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand where she founded the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation in 2007. She is also a literary translator, with a dozen book-length translations published. Carolina Miranda is the director of European and Latin American languages and cultures at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Barbara Pezzotti teaches Italian Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia and is an Honorary Research Associate of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS). She is the author of three monographs on Italian crime fiction.