One of the world’s best-known crime fiction authors; the dreamer of legendary detective figures such as Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. British writer Agatha Christie, born on September 15, 1890, is one of the most widely read authors in the world, her crime novels and short stories, translated into more than a hundred languages, have sold hundreds of millions of copies.
Literary historian Valéria Propper is an ardent fan of the writer; thus, he dedicated his April lecture in the Vásárhely library to him.
Hidden moments
I am convinced that the writer’s books have a primary reading: in the beginning, as I do, we inevitably look for the killer in the story. Paying attention mainly to the characters, the relationship between them, the criminal case, the investigation, we do not notice the hidden moments. But on the second or third time, we can come across shocking details and countless Hungarian-related comments. Partly for this reason alone, it is worth reading his novels more than once
– literary historian Valéria Propper, who has long been known to the Vásárhely audience, told our paper about her easy-to-understand and twisty lectures.
The situation is not reassuring
As an example of a question asking for Hungarian-related details, he mentioned: In one of Agatha’s short stories, in a dialogue between two men, the phrase: The situation in Hungary is not reassuring.
15 years after the Trianon tragedy, and not long after Hitler came to power in Germany, an English magazine published one of Agatha’s short stories. With this Hungarian-related sentence in it. So, knowing the historical processes, that single statement sounds completely different, can be interpreted with a different weight. And how many more similar ones can we find. The connection points are absolutely recognisable, it’s just worth digging deeper into the writer’s life and reading her stories carefully and with understanding
he drew attention.
This is not a novel, it is reality
Just like her novels, Agatha’s life also hides an unsolvable secret. As Valéria Propper also said: nothing has ever been revealed about her strange, eleven-day disappearance and presumably never will.
In December 1926, the writer disappeared without a trace for a week and a half, and a manhunt was launched to find her. When he was found, he claimed that he did not remember what had happened.
According to the literary historian, we can imagine what happened to him along a kind of logic. But even today many people are trying to decipher the events of the unknown days; there are those who accept the amnesia explanation, but there are those who consider what happened to be a farce and to embarrass her husband. One thing is certain: Agatha Christie refused to talk about those 11 days or about her first marriage.
