ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to ponder the tridimensional relationship between crime fiction, authoritarian regimes and world literature, exploring the extent to which it is possible to understand “the circulation and translation of ideas, themes, and concerns about crime and policing across and between national traditions, while attempting to pay due attention to specific sociocultural and institutional contexts”. It focuses on two groups of authoritarian regimes: Communist, and Latin American military dictatorships. The chapter discusses many crime writers shared an awareness of being part of a transnational phenomenon that eventually led to what is known as neopolicial. It is important to emphasise the self-perception of crime fiction authors, readers and critics from Latin America as a transnational community trying to cope in similar ways with the trauma of their respective dictatorships and their transition to democracy, topics further developed in memory and trauma.
