The Sunday News
Peter Matika, Senior Leisure Reporter
BELIEVED to be dead, one of the world’s renowned authors, who sits arguably as the third best-selling novelist, Agatha Christie, was recently in Zimbabwe, touring the lively City of Kings and majestic Victoria Falls.
The geriatric Christie, whose age and identity has been questionable for years, was in Bulawayo for the second time in her lifetime after she first visited Bulawayo in 1922.
In celebrating her work and also paying tribute to the writer, AmaBooks publishers set a talk, which was also a platform for local writer Bryony Rheam to speak about his work, which is largely inspired by Christie.
Rheam said Christie was considered the best-selling novelist of all time, and is claimed to come third in the rankings of the world’s most widely published authors, behind only Wiliam Shakespeare and the Bible.
“She was also a playwright; her play The Mousetrap opened in London in 1952 and is still running in 2015, after more than 25 000 performances. 93 years ago, in 1922, she visited Bulawayo, staying at the Grand Hotel, before moving on to the Victoria Falls Hotel. Agatha Christie was inspired by her visit to write her third book, The Man in the Brown Suit, which was set partly in this country, the two main characters ending up living on an island in the Zambezi. One scrap of paper links a diamond robbery, an accidental death, a London tube station — and a murder in a remote country mansion. Anne Beddingfield will follow the mystery all the way to Africa, to Bulawayo and the Zambezi River,” he said also referring to a chapter in the novel.
Rheam noted that several references to Agatha Christie occurred in his award-winning novel — This September Sun.
This September Sun won Best First Book at the 2010 Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association Awards and is a set text for A-level ZIMSEC Literature in English, has been published in Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan, and, in 2013, as an e-book.
It is reported that the book became the best selling title on Amazon in the United Kingdom.
Rheam gave a talk at the National Museum in Bulawayo about his book, which he widely referred to Christie.
Rheam is also a winner of the international Write Your Own Christie writing competition.
Each month, writers were asked to submit the next chapter of the story. “The judges then selected the winner for that particular month, and the competition and the novel evolved over a nine month period,” he said.
Rheam was runner-up for Chapter Seven and winner for Chapter Eight, the judges commenting about his winning entry: “It was a confident chapter with a terrific ending, as well as a carefully plotted solution.”
Rheam’s prize included a dinner at Christie’s house, in Greenway, near Torquay in southern England.
The dinner was also attended by Christie’s grandson, Matthew Pritchard and some British and American publishers.
Rheam said attending the dinner was a great honour for him.
“Going to the dinner was a great honour for me, not just as a writer, but as a fan of Agatha Christie. I have always loved her books and admire her great intelligence and ability to outwit the reader every time,” he said.
Rheam has also finished working on his second novel, All Come to Dust, which is a murder mystery set in Bulawayo, inspired by the work of Christie.
According to reports online, Christie also wrote six romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections that she wrote under her own name.
She also holds a record of writing the world’s longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap. In 1971 she was made a Dame for her contribution to literature.
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon. She served in a hospital during the First World War before marrying and starting a family in London. She was initially unsuccessful at getting her work published, but in 1920 The Bodley Head Press published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring the character of Hercules Poirot.
This launched her literary career.
The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly two billion copies.
According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author — having been translated into at least 103 languages. And Then There Were None is Christie’s best-selling novel, with 100 million sales to date, making it the world’s best-selling mystery ever, and one of the best-selling books of all time.
