In Search Of The Final Solution: Crime narrative as a paradigm for exploring responses to the Holocaust

Abstract

The narrative device of Historian-As-Detective is practically a standardized feature of contemporary Holocaust fiction, replicating as it does the reader's own quest for understanding of the Holocaust. Contemporary Holocaust narratives can be seen to borrow heavily from some of the most recognizable narrative patterns of crime fiction (specifically the individual quest for knowledge in the face of a crisis that threatens the fabric of social order), creating a dialectic between knowing and not-knowing that is played out in the symbiotic relationship between two or more narrative strands. This article examines similarities in both structure and effect which exist between the two genres and explores the explicit manifestation of these similarities in Michael Chabon's The Final Solution (2006) and The Yiddish Policeman's Union (2007).