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Groundless Noir: Ontology and Latin American Crime Fiction
This philosophical study of Latin American noir fiction poses the question, What if precarity and uncertainty aren’t just themes of the genre but ways of being in the world? Emerging from a region immersed in violence, trauma, and political instability, the novela negra reveals not just disillusionment but a desire to adapt to, even dwell within, chaos. In the hands of writers like Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, and Patricia Melo, savvy detectives and antiheroes navigate a world in which meaning constantly shifts and certainty is elusive. Blending literary analysis with philosophical inquiry, Larson draws on Heideggerian ontology to demonstrate how the noir novel becomes a mode of existence―grounded in its very groundlessness. Rather than offering resolution, these novels embody a paradoxical to engage crisis while also adapting to it. In doing so, they become both ideological and pedagogical―existential fiction for an uncertain world.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
206 pages, Hardcover
Published May 12, 2026
About the author
Erik Larson
41 books71.3k followersErik Larson is the author of nine books and one audio-only novella. His latest book, The Demon of Unrest, is a non-fiction thriller about the five months between Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War. Six of his books became New York Times bestsellers. Two of these, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, both hit no. 1 on the list soon after launch. His chronicle of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, The Devil in the White City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing. It lingered on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade and is currently in development at Disney Studios. Erik’s In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, is currently in development with StudioCanal and Playtone.
Erik’s first book of narrative nonfiction, Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, won the American Meteorology Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award. The Washington Post called it the “Jaws of hurricane yarns.” Erik is particularly pleased to have won the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 2016 Carl Sandburg Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
His audio novella, No One Goes Alone, while a work of fiction, is a ghost story based on real-life events and characters, including famed 19th-century psychologist William James. Erik refers to it as a ghost story with footnotes.
He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language and culture; he received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. After a brief stint at the Bucks County Courier Times, Erik became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and later a contributing writer for Time Magazine. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications.
He has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, the University of Oregon, and the Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, Wash., and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. A former resident of Seattle, he now lives in Manhattan with his wife, a neonatologist, who is also the author of the nonfiction memoir, Almost Home, which, as Erik puts it, “could make a stone cry.” They have three daughters in far-flung locations and professions. Their beloved dog Molly resides in an urn on a shelf overlooking Central Park, where they like to think she now spends most of her time.
Erik’s first book of narrative nonfiction, Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, won the American Meteorology Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award. The Washington Post called it the “Jaws of hurricane yarns.” Erik is particularly pleased to have won the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 2016 Carl Sandburg Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
His audio novella, No One Goes Alone, while a work of fiction, is a ghost story based on real-life events and characters, including famed 19th-century psychologist William James. Erik refers to it as a ghost story with footnotes.
He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language and culture; he received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. After a brief stint at the Bucks County Courier Times, Erik became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and later a contributing writer for Time Magazine. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications.
He has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, the University of Oregon, and the Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, Wash., and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. A former resident of Seattle, he now lives in Manhattan with his wife, a neonatologist, who is also the author of the nonfiction memoir, Almost Home, which, as Erik puts it, “could make a stone cry.” They have three daughters in far-flung locations and professions. Their beloved dog Molly resides in an urn on a shelf overlooking Central Park, where they like to think she now spends most of her time.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
October 29, 2026
Groundless Noir: Ontology and Latin American Crime Fiction by Erik Larson offers a thought-provoking examination of the relationship between crime fiction, philosophical inquiry, and the experience of living in an uncertain world. Rather than treating precarity and instability as mere background elements, the study considers how they can shape the very way characters exist and respond to their surroundings.
Through the works of writers such as Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, and Patricia Melo, Larson explores how detectives and antiheroes navigate environments marked by violence, trauma, political instability, and shifting meanings. Drawing on Heideggerian ontology, the book connects the conventions of Latin American noir with broader questions about existence, uncertainty, and adaptation.
One of the study’s most compelling ideas is that noir fiction does not always need to resolve the crises it presents. Instead, these narratives can reveal how people learn to inhabit instability, confront difficult realities, and continue living when certainty remains out of reach. This perspective gives the genre philosophical significance beyond the familiar mechanics of crime and investigation.
Readers interested in Latin American literature, literary theory, existential philosophy, and the cultural dimensions of crime fiction may find this study particularly rewarding. By bringing philosophical concepts into conversation with influential noir writers, Groundless Noir offers a distinctive framework for considering how literature responds to crisis and what it can teach us about navigating an unpredictable world.
Through the works of writers such as Ricardo Piglia, Roberto Bolaño, and Patricia Melo, Larson explores how detectives and antiheroes navigate environments marked by violence, trauma, political instability, and shifting meanings. Drawing on Heideggerian ontology, the book connects the conventions of Latin American noir with broader questions about existence, uncertainty, and adaptation.
One of the study’s most compelling ideas is that noir fiction does not always need to resolve the crises it presents. Instead, these narratives can reveal how people learn to inhabit instability, confront difficult realities, and continue living when certainty remains out of reach. This perspective gives the genre philosophical significance beyond the familiar mechanics of crime and investigation.
Readers interested in Latin American literature, literary theory, existential philosophy, and the cultural dimensions of crime fiction may find this study particularly rewarding. By bringing philosophical concepts into conversation with influential noir writers, Groundless Noir offers a distinctive framework for considering how literature responds to crisis and what it can teach us about navigating an unpredictable world.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review