The Post-War Netherlands of Inspector Van der Valk
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Silesian Studies In English 2021. Proceedings of the 6th international conference of English and American studies, 9th-10th September 2021 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | Odkaz na plný text výsledku |
| Keywords | Nicolas Freeling; Van der Valk; detective novel; British literature; post-war society; the Netherlands |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The post-war British crime fiction has seen a turn from the Golden-Age clue puzzle story towards an international context, as well as a change of location from the isolated mansion to the big city. Nicolas Freeling’s Inspector Van der Valk series, set in Amsterdam and featuring a Dutch detective, is a great illustration of this development. However, on the example of three novels from the series, Double-Barrel (1964), Because of the Cats (1963) and Tsing-Boum (1969), this article argues that despite the Dutch setting, the novels tell the reader more about the European and British post-war society than they do about the Dutch one, as especially in the cases of class and the attitude towards the Second World War, Freeling tends to project the British society onto its Dutch neighbours. |
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