It is with great pleasure that we can announce the publication of another excellent and far-reaching book that has been indexed by Southwest Humanities. Published by Bucknell University Press on 12 May 2026, Groundless Noir: Ontology and Latin American Crime Fiction by Erik Larson is an ambitious interdisciplinary study that brings together literary criticism, philosophy, and Latin American cultural studies to rethink the meaning of noir fiction in the region. Focusing on writers such as Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, Patricia Melo, and Ignacio Padilla, Larson argues that the Latin American novela negra is not simply a genre concerned with crime, violence, or political corruption. Rather, these works express a deeper existential condition shaped by instability, precarity, and uncertainty. Drawing heavily on Heideggerian ontology, Larson proposes that noir fiction in Latin America becomes a way of inhabiting a world in which stable meanings, moral certainties, and institutional foundations have broken down. Rather than restoring order, the detectives and antiheroes of these novels learn to navigate ambiguity itself.

The book makes a significant contribution to both Latin American literary studies and noir/crime fiction scholarship by shifting attention from questions of genre convention toward broader philosophical and ontological concerns. Larson shows how Latin American noir transforms the traditionally hard-boiled detective narrative into a meditation on how individuals survive amid political violence, economic crisis, and social fragmentation. In doing so, Groundless Noir also intervenes in debates about world literature, postmodernism, and the relationship between literature and lived experience. The study is especially valuable for scholars interested in the intersections of philosophy and fiction, as it demonstrates how noir narratives can function not merely as representations of crisis but as pedagogical and existential frameworks for understanding life in unstable worlds.

For more information about this important new work, please see the publisher’s website here.