Fixing the guilt: Detective fiction and the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of popular detective fiction in Africa as part of a new third wave of literature. While the new wave is a very particular response to conditions on the continent it nevertheless taps into the main streams of detective fiction that have emerged from Britain and in some respects the USA in the last hundred years. In particular this article focuses on the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith and examines ways in which the postcolony reproduces the colony and how, in some respects the erstwhile empire desires to produce the postcolony.

Keywords: African literature, detective fiction, Alexander McCall Smith

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde • 43(2) • 2006: 123-140