{"id":73687,"date":"2023-03-28T11:56:33","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T16:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=73687"},"modified":"2023-03-28T11:56:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T16:56:33","slug":"agatha-christie-novels-edited-by-harpercollins-to-remove-offensive-references-to-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/agatha-christie-novels-edited-by-harpercollins-to-remove-offensive-references-to-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"Agatha Christie novels edited by HarperCollins to remove offensive references to Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By GABE FRIEDMAN<\/p>\n<p>(JTA) \u2014 HarperCollins has revised multiple novels by the famed British mystery writer Agatha Christie to remove references to Jews and other minorities deemed offensive by sensitivity readers.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_73688\" style=\"width: 222px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-73688\" class=\"wp-image-73688 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-212x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-722x1024.jpg 722w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-768x1089.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-1083x1536.jpg 1083w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie.jpg 1410w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 212px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 212\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-73688\" class=\"wp-image-73688 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-212x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-722x1024.jpg 722w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-768x1089.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie-1083x1536.jpg 1083w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Agatha_Christie.jpg 1410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-73688\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Agatha Christie (National Archief via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The edits, which the British Telegraph first reported on Sunday, add Christie to a growing list of authors whose work is getting tweaked for contemporary audiences. Roald Dahl, the children\u2019s book author whose family recently apologized for his antisemitism, also had versions of his books recently revised to eliminate potentially offensive language.<\/p>\n<p>Christie, whose midcentury detective novels featuring the characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple made her one of the best-selling fiction writers of all time, included references to Jews in several of her books that prominent critics found antisemitic. She also included racist language that was more common during her time of writing, including the N-word and the term \u201cOriental\u201d to describe characters with Asian heritage.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Telegraph report, descriptions of characters as Jewish, Black or \u201cgypsy\u201d have been scrubbed from multiple books. In one example, Poirot\u2019s description of a character as \u201ca Jew, of course\u201d in \u201cThe Mysterious Affair at Styles,\u201d has been deleted.<\/p>\n<p>The Forward noted in a 2020 analysis that right after World War II and the Holocaust, Christie authorized her U.S. publisher to remove other language about Jews that the company deemed controversial. The Guardian reported that at least one of the titles of her books was changed to remove racist language in the 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs her circle of acquaintances widened and she grew to understand what Nazism really meant for Jewish people, Christie abandoned her knee-jerk anti-Semitism,\u201d wrote Gillian Gill in her 1990 book \u201cAgatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Agatha%20Christie%20novels%20edited%20by%20HarperCollins%20to%20remove%20offensive%20references%20to%20Jews\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7135],"tags":[12976,11847,8790,8795,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73689,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73687\/revisions\/73689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}