Detective Fiction in a Post-Truth World: Eva Rossmann’s <i>Patrioten</i>

• Main Author: Anita McChesney
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-02-01
• Series: Humanities
• Subjects: detective and mystery stories; austrian crime fiction; contemporary austrian literature; kriminalliteratur/deutsch; post-truth; truth; nationalism in literature 21st century; patriotism in literature 21st century
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/1/15

Detective fiction is known as a genre that is concerned with revealing truths, both in the fictional world of the text as well as in the society after which it is patterned. The current socio-political environment, however, has been described as an era of post-truth politics and political propaganda, in which truth is more often determined by the relative strength of its representation. While some contemporary crime novels continue to propagate a reassuring message of truth, select Austrian narratives reflect this new so-called post-truth world. Bringing together theories of detective fiction and post-truth discourse, this article demonstrates how Eva Rossmann&#8217;s 2017 crime novel <i>Patrioten</i> (<i>Patriots</i>) adapts the themes and structures of traditional detective narratives to expose a society in which certainty is determined less by objective facts than by their construction in the media and socio-political discourse. The analysis concludes that the novel&#8217;s thematic and formal innovations help to redefine the socio-critical potential of contemporary detective fiction by showing the imminent dangers of an unregulated post-truth society.