Agatha Christie
Over the next few years, we plan to celebrate two very important Agatha Christie anniversaries. In 2015, it is the 125th anniversary of her birth in Torquay, South Devon, England, and in 2020 it will be 100 years after her first book, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, featuring her famous detective, Hercule Poirot, was published. This is therefore a very appropriate moment to publish a new edition of her works, and I am delighted that Harper Collins has chosen to work with New Star on these new editions. New Star is China's top crime publisher, and has a strong and dedicated editorial staff and a confirmed passion for Agatha Christie, making them the ideal partner. It is the right time to make these classic books available in modern translations and so to bring Agatha Christie's books anew to her many fans in China, giving them a new reason to re-read these much-loved stories, as well as introducing them to a whole new audience. How delighted Agatha Christie would have been that her stories (as she called them) are still giving so much pleasure to so many people all over the world!
I think there are two very remarkable things about Agatha Christie's. The first is that they are so adaptable. It doesn't really matter which language they appear in, the stories and the plots still give the same thrill, still provide the same puzzles, and the characters still have the same attraction. Readers in China will I am sure enjoy Hercule Poirot and Miss Maple just as much as we do in England, and readers in China will still be transfixed by the surprises and horrors of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, one of the great classics of 20th century detective fiction, as we are here.
The second is that the stories give a wonderful picture of England, particularly rural England, at the time Agatha Christie lived. She wrote books from 1920 until 1970 but it is sometimes hard to tell which part of her life each book was written in. Her characters and the life they lived were very much the same. The life we all live is changing very quickly these days but "The Agatha Christie would stays the same. Perhaps the Miss Marple stories provide the best example of this, and in some ways THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY and NEMESIS are quite similar, despite the fact that thirty years elapsed between the time they were written.
Perhaps I might end by mentioning these Agatha Christies (Other than the ones mentioned above) which I think demonstrate why she is so popular, even in the twenty-first century. The first is MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, one of the most famous with one of the most ingenious and human plots. Read this as one of your long train journeys in China! Next is A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED, a Miss Marple which was her 50th book. It has my favourite murderer in it! And last is ENDLESS NIGHT, a story about evil and how it affects three young people, written at the time when I knew her best, and understood how deeply she cared and sympathised with young people and the world they lived in.
Whichever are your favourites I hope you enjoy these stories that new Star are introducing to you again. I think it is a great publishing event.
Mathew Prichard
Grandson of Agatha Christie
Chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd.
I think there are two very remarkable things about Agatha Christie's. The first is that they are so adaptable. It doesn't really matter which language they appear in, the stories and the plots still give the same thrill, still provide the same puzzles, and the characters still have the same attraction. Readers in China will I am sure enjoy Hercule Poirot and Miss Maple just as much as we do in England, and readers in China will still be transfixed by the surprises and horrors of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, one of the great classics of 20th century detective fiction, as we are here.
The second is that the stories give a wonderful picture of England, particularly rural England, at the time Agatha Christie lived. She wrote books from 1920 until 1970 but it is sometimes hard to tell which part of her life each book was written in. Her characters and the life they lived were very much the same. The life we all live is changing very quickly these days but "The Agatha Christie would stays the same. Perhaps the Miss Marple stories provide the best example of this, and in some ways THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY and NEMESIS are quite similar, despite the fact that thirty years elapsed between the time they were written.
Perhaps I might end by mentioning these Agatha Christies (Other than the ones mentioned above) which I think demonstrate why she is so popular, even in the twenty-first century. The first is MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, one of the most famous with one of the most ingenious and human plots. Read this as one of your long train journeys in China! Next is A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED, a Miss Marple which was her 50th book. It has my favourite murderer in it! And last is ENDLESS NIGHT, a story about evil and how it affects three young people, written at the time when I knew her best, and understood how deeply she cared and sympathised with young people and the world they lived in.
Whichever are your favourites I hope you enjoy these stories that new Star are introducing to you again. I think it is a great publishing event.
Mathew Prichard
Grandson of Agatha Christie
Chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd.
