More recently, there has been heated debate over whether Roald Dahl’s children’s books (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) should be revised for today’s young readers, to remove or tone down terms and passages that are now perceived as too violent or offensive become. It was about racist terms, insults to overweight children and depictions of violence. But should publishers (be allowed) to change literary classics? This is still a question that does not seem to have a fully convincing answer.
Now a similar debate is flaring up about the works of the “Queen of Crime”, Agatha Christie. The Briton, who published 66 novels during her lifetime and invented the famous detectives Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, has been one of the most successful and popular writers in the world for decades. Her books have been translated into more than 100 languages and many have been filmed. You certainly can’t call her a racist – but she lived and wrote in a time when many people had a different view of everything foreign than we do today. In addition, she often used clichéd figures and stereotypes and was caught up in the prejudices of her time.
This isn’t the first time Christie’s books have been altered for reasons of “political correctness.” Her psychological thriller “And Then There Were None More” originally had the title “Ten Little N-” after an old nursery rhyme. In the original English he was called “Ten Little N-“. What was a common line of text in 1939 became offensive to readers just a few years later, so in 1964 the title was aggravated to “Ten Little I-” and now referred to Native Americans. Since that was soon felt to be inappropriate, the book has been called “And Then There Were None” since 1986, which is the last line of the corresponding nursery rhyme. The current German title is also based on this.
HarperCollins publishers now hired “awareness editors” who examined the Christie crime novels for passages that are no longer relevant today. The focus should be on stereotypes regarding origin and gender. Terms such as “natives” or “oriental”, clichéd descriptions of Jewish, Indian or black figures were changed, and terms such as the Z-word are to be deleted. The changes are to be implemented in future new editions.
Sources: The Guardian, CNN
