Viva Vargas!

I try as a rule to avoid those debates about whether crime fiction is real literature or not, but I did enjoy the headline on an old newspaper article that I found this evening through the Detectives literarios blog. The article, from the Spanish newspaper El País, is an interview with Fred Vargas, who has been on my mind in recent days.

I can't read Spanish beyond guessing at words here and there, but no great knowledge is required to understand the headline, which may make crime-fiction readers proud:

"La novela policiaca deriva de la literatura épica"

With a bit of help from my scraps of French and Italian and a bit more from a translation program, I gathered that Vargas has some highly interesting thoughts about the phenomenon of the recurring series protagonist. She links it to ancient and medieval tales, in which one hero embarks on a series of adventures that take up almost his entire life.

She also reveals her first two literary loves: Rousseau and Proust.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Fred Vargas
French crime fiction