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Agatha Christie Books to be ‘Rewritten for Modern Sensitivities’

Agatha Christie Books to be ‘Rewritten for Modern Sensitivities’

“These changes come after similar recent treatment of books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, who created James Bond.”

The idea of rewriting books is straight out of Orwell. Did you think you’d ever see this in your lifetime?

Deadline reports:

Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Miss Marple Classic Mysteries Rewritten For Modern Sensitivities

Agatha Christie is the latest bestselling novelist to get the rewriting treatment for 2023 readers, according to a British newspaper.

The bestselling novelist in the world, Christie created enduring popular sleuths Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and the Daily Telegraph reports that new editions of both these series have had original passages amended or removed by publisher Harper Collins.

The Telegraph states that digital versions of new editions of the books written between 1920 and 1976 (the year of Christie’s death) include text stripped of “descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK.”

For example, in the book Death on the Nile – published in 1937 and recently remade for the big screen by Kenneth Branagh – references to “Nubian people” have been removed, as have several references to non-British characters’ physiques. The word “local” replaces “native”

A line in Christie’s debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles which has Poirot commenting on a character being “a Jew” has gone. And Christie’s narration and sections of dialogue uttered by unsympathetic characters have also been cut, according to the newspaper.

These changes come after similar recent treatment of books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, who created James Bond.

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Comments

retiredcantbefired | March 27, 2023 at 3:38 pm

It is out of Orwell.

At least the rewritten books aren’t in Newspeak—yet.

healthguyfsu | March 27, 2023 at 3:52 pm

We’re going to need kindling when all the power goes out.

BierceAmbrose | March 27, 2023 at 4:29 pm

This isn’t about protecting anyone; it’s about demonstrating that nobody’s life is their own. Not even the famous dead can be themselves these days.

It’s not so bad as long as the real text is still available.

I wonder how many ebooks are stealth edited and simply dumped on the market. Would be a cinch with .epub and .mobi files. And when caught publishers just say it was a coding error.

The local library shelves a edited Mark Twain book. I forget which one – probaby Huckleberry Finn. I mentioned it to the branch manager during “banned” book month. I told her that editing Mark Twain is a form of vandalism no different from me vandalizing a Jackson Pollack painting by splashing red paint on the canvas because his art offends.. She didn’t appreciate my input. (the branch manager was woke and no longer works for the county)

Somewhere in storage, I have the pantaloons from the legs limbs of my grandmother’s grand piano.

I could use them as patterns to make money during our incipient Brave New Age, except American families don’t buy pianos anymore.

The Gentle Grizzly | March 27, 2023 at 10:14 pm

Will they change the title “Ten Little Indians” AGAIN?

Christie’s narration and sections of dialogue uttered by unsympathetic characters have also been cut

Are unsympathetic characters no longer permitted? Perhaps the supposedly offensive dialogue was intended to make the reader dislike them, but that nuance will be lost without the deleted text.

I am a huge Agatha Christie fan. If you look at one of her books, you’ll see it’s not very thick. She does not pad her descriptions of places or people. Instead, she utilizes concise language. I cannot imagine Harpers Collins actually removing descriptions. They are headed towards publishing books consisting only of prepositions and the odd pronoun. What fools those editors are.