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Agatha Christie's novels are being rewritten by her publisher, HarperCollins, to adapt them to "modern sensibilities", the Sunday Telegraph revealed on Sunday.

The mysteries of detective Hercules Poirot and Miss Marple join the wave of reissues to make them more acceptable to new readers who have also reached the books of Roald Dahl or the adventures of James Bond written by Ian Fleming.

Entire passages of the works of the "queen of crime" have been removed or rewritten in the new editions of those books that are being prepared or that have been published since 2020.

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A commission of "sensitive readers" has reviewed Christie's works to ensure that "ethnic insults or references" have been suppressed, as well as physical descriptions of some of the characters.

The newspaper cites the example of several comments on the teeth and physiques of people who appear in books that have been suppressed, especially in cases where the protagonists of the novels find people outside the UK.

Marple and Poirot's internal monologues have been sectioned and references to a character's repulsion by children have been modified.

The vocabulary has also been altered to eliminate the term "oriental", while the racial allusion of a black servant has been removed, among other examples cited by the newspaper.

HarperCollins, according to the Telegraph, has created new editions of all of Miss Marple's adventures, as well as a selection of Poirot novels.

The company Agatha Christie Limited, run by the great-grandson of the author James Prichard, manages the rights to his works for literature and film.

According to The Trust Project criteria

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