Sophie Hannah’s Hurting Distance as Crime Trauma Fiction

Abstract

Rodi-Risberg addresses trauma’s generic border-crossing movement through Sophie Hannah’s socially conscious crime thriller Hurting Distance (2007), a trauma narrative of sexual violence and emotional abuse that can be referred to as crime trauma fiction because it incorporates and blends features of both genres. Rodi-Risberg’s main argument is that crime trauma fiction such as Hannah’s novel represents traumatic experience as politically significant by mobilising affect through its themes of violence as social critique. The chapter concludes that contemporary narratives of crime and trauma such as Hannah’s should be seen as an important locus not only for representing traumatic experience, but also for offering a productive space for acknowledging suffering through the ethical witnessing and politically engaged reading of uncomfortable scenes of violence.