The French publisher of Agatha Christie will also remove terms deemed offensive

Europe 1 with AFP 15:45 p.m., April 17, 2023

The French translations of Agatha Christie will be subject to "revisions", including the removal of terms deemed offensive on the physique or origin of characters, "thus aligning with other international editions," said a spokeswoman for the editions of the Mask to AFP Monday. "The French translations of Agatha Christie's work are subject to usual revisions and over the years incorporate the corrections requested by Agatha Christie Limited (the company that manages the author's work, editor's note), thus aligning itself with other international editions," says the publisher, which is part of the Hachette group.

Passages rewritten after peer review

At the end of March, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported that several passages of the novels recounting the investigations of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, originally published between 1920 and 1976, had been rewritten after peer review. In particular, the publisher has modified or removed descriptions of certain foreign characters. As in "Death on the Nile" (1937), where the character of Mrs. Allerton complained about a group of children and mocked their noses, or in "The Mysterious Case of Styles" (1920), in which Hercule Poirot pointed out that another character was "a Jew, of course".

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This is not the first time that an Agatha Christie title has been changed. In 2020, the detective novel "Ten Little Negroes", one of the most read and sold in the world, was renamed "They were ten" and the pejorative name, cited 74 times in the original version, was removed from the new edition.

Outcry in UK over changes to children's novels

Recently, changes to English author Roald Dahl's children's novels sparked outrage in the UK. References to weight, mental health, violence or racial issues had been redacted from works like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or James and the Big Peach. Faced with the outcry, his publisher, Puffin UK, had assured that he would continue to publish the original versions in a special collection.

The author's French publishing house, Gallimard Jeunesse, said it would continue to publish the original versions. The adventures of the famous British spy James Bond, written by Ian Fleming, have also been rewritten in English to remove some passages deemed racist.