Polish version of hard-boiled novel: Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski on the background of the Polish crime fiction history

Abstract

In the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century few Polish authors exploited the convention of crime fiction. The situation improved in the Interwar period, but World War II interrupted the evolution of this literary genre in Poland. After the war, due to the state’s cultural policy, crime fiction could not be published between 1948 and 1956. Since 1956 (in which Polish Thaw began) a specific type of crime fiction began to develop in Poland: a militia novel in which the persuasive function dominated over the entertainment function. The situation has changed after the political transformation in 1989. The book market has been dominated by foreign authors, such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle and so on. Only the novel Death in Breslau, 1999 (the first of 11 novels in Eberhard Mock’s series published so far), which is Marek Krajewski’s debut and representing the hard-boiled genre, has broken this domination. The writer used the gore aesthetic (which was something new in Polish crime fiction), a grim main character, and an interesting, non-obvious setting: prewar Wrocław, that is Breslau. The success of Krajewski’s novels has initiated a new era in Polish crime fiction history and contributed to the evolution of that genre in Poland – including the rise of the retro crime fiction and Polish version of hard-boiled fiction.