Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Fiction

Although Spain has one of the lowest per capita rates of book buying in Europe, popular and mass-market print fiction is perennially in demand. The essays in this volume assess the appeal of popular genres such as the detective novel, romance, and science fiction to particular groups of readers and consider what makes a bestseller in the Spanish context. They look at how reader taste is directed by nonacademic book-buying magazines and analyze the political intentions of seemingly innocuous comics and popular novels with particular reference to women's writing. Chapters also consider how and why "canonical" writers like Manuel Vasquez Montalban, Esther Tusquets, or Carmen Martin Gaite decide to incorporate the themes, devices, and structures of mass cultural products into their "highbrow" literature. The wide-ranging nature of this volume and its fusion of textual analysis and theoretical overview provide unique access to aspects of Spanish mass, popular, and "high" literature hitherto largely ignored by the critics. Shelley Godsland is Jubilee Research Fellow, Department of Hispanic Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London. Nickiane Moody is principal lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.