Marseilles as a port city in Jean Claude Izzo’s crime novels

This chapter analyses the representation of Marseilles as a port city in Jean-Claude Izzo’s crime trilogy. The series features the re-development of the Old Port and surrounding areas that took place in the 1980s and 1990s, which caused the Marseilles Old Port to lose its original function with consequences that are still felt today. Through a close reading of Izzo’s novels, this chapter shows how crime fiction reveals itself as an effective medium through which the social and cultural function of Marseilles Old Port can be discussed. In particular, it argues that in Izzo’s novels, the Marseilles Old Port is a liminal space that makes Marseilles a multi-ethnic and multicultural city, a space where new languages and culture thrive, and ultimately, a space that needs to be preserved. By showing how the harbour is both a physical space of encounter and a powerful symbol of a shared culture and identity, Izzo’s crime fiction overcomes the exclusionary rhetoric of the urban space, constructs transculturality and produces a progressive vision of the liquid port city under threat by commercial re-developments.