All in. Gambling i litteraturen fra Lessing til finanskrisen

For centuries, gambling has been a recurring theme in fiction. Since the recent credit crunch of 2008, gambling has attained a partly new role in the emerging genre of “crunch fiction”. It can now be connected to financial speculation in ways that also showcase the abstract, even fictional character of modern markets and wealth. In this article, we draw connections and comparisons between the 19th century literary gambler and contemporary crunch fiction as expressed in e.g. Sebastian Faulks’ A Week in December (2009) and J. D. Chandor’s film Margin Call (2011).