The Hagia Sophia and the Other Turkish Locations in Agatha Christie’s “Murder On the Orient Express” (original) (raw)
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Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 2020
Agatha Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express focuses on Hercule Poirot, the internationally renowned detective of Belgian origin, who has to leave Istanbul immediately after arriving. The novel is not only a murder story that uses the tropes of detective fiction, but also a novel revolving around the conflicts stemming from orientalist discourse and that of multiculturalism. Peyami Safa's 1934 novel Arséne Lupin in Istanbul, written under the nom de plume Server Bedi, is a novel of murder and theft focusing on the stories of a Turkish thief called Cingöz Recai, and a mysterious Belgian thief called Arséne Lupin, in Istanbul. The murders and thefts that occur in the novel are depicted in the narrative style of detective fiction, which was quite new to Turkish literature at the time of its publication, while the multicultural Istanbul lies in the background. This article reads Murder on the Orient Express and Arséne Lupin in Istanbul comparatively in terms of multiculturalism and orientalism, questioning, in the process, whether or not the multicultural background common to both novels may be considered as the very source of mystery behind the stories themselves.
is the world's best known mystery writer. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare.
Crime and punishment: Re-reading Agatha Christie’s novel murder on the orient express
International Journal of Advanced Academic Studies
Agatha Christie was one of the most prominent writers during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. She was at the height of her success in the 1920s and 30s and was often called the "Queen of Mystery" by her fans and lovers. She is even more important in the historical context since she started writing at a time when not many female authors were writing. Her contemporaries and predecessors mostly included male writers. When she started writing, Sherlock Holmes was at the pinnacle of stardom and it was a challenge for Christie to create a detective that would be different than Sherlock and yet appeal to the readers. Credit goes to Christie for taking up this challenge and making a position of her own. It is said that only Bible and William Shakespeare have outsold her. Many of her novels were listed in Guinness World Records for the number of copies sold. Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short stories collection. She also wrote 5 novels under the penname Mary Westmacott. Among the many sleuths and detectives whom she created, two became widely famous and enjoy the immense amount of success even today, namely Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. "Murder on the Orient Express" is one of the most famous and successful novels written by Agatha Christie featuring Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective. It has been adapted into popular culture such as TV and cinema number of times. Poirot has stood the test of time and remains one of the most popular detectives in the literary world. This research paper will critically analyse and evaluate the novel "Murder on the Orient Express". The reason for selecting this novel was its fame, success and the author who wrote it. This novel has been adapted into cinema various times. Two such noteworthy movies would be one from 1974, directed by Sidney Lumet and another one released in 2018, directed by Kenneth Branagh. This novel has been reprinted hundreds of times. Many readers have reread it. Being a mystery novel, once a reader has read it and has known the mystery, one would think there would be no incentive behind reading the same mystery novel a second time. But this is not the case with Christie's books. MOE is one such novel and thus it was felt that a deeper understanding of this mystery novel by a critical evaluation is essential from the academic context. Another reason for selecting this novel for the purpose of analysis is that this novel was a lot different than the other whodunit mystery novels penned by Christie. The setting of the story is the same. There are typical elements in the novel one would see in any Agatha Christie novel. What sets this one apart is the number of culprits involved in the murder, the way all the suspects are related to each other and the victim and the moral issues and sense of justice served in the end. In fact, the sense of justice as shown by Poirot in this novel differs from his usual mannerisms in the other novels. This novel is important because Christie chose to break away from the formulaic plot and broke the rules of the genre to write a story which was a breath of fresh air. This paper will critically analyse the aspect of justice, ethics and morality and will try to analyse if the victim in the novel was really the victim or whether the 12 suspects were the real victims. This research paper will also analyse the source of inspiration for the novel, narrative style used in the novel and the presence of stereotypes and their importance in the novel. This research paper will also critically analyse the aspect of moral judgement and justice shown.
'Beautiful Shining Order'. Detective Authority in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express
Drawing on the work of Pierre Bayard, this essay presents a “counterinvestigative” reading of Murder on the Orient Express (1934) that highlights how Christie’s novel undermines Poirot’s authority as a detective and thereby also undermines his solution. The essay argues that the dénouement fails to bring about complete transparency and reduce the literary complexity of Christie’s plot.
Murder and Crime-Solving Strategies in Agatha Christie’s Works
Folia linguistica et litteraria, 2022
In Agatha Christie’s literary career, which spanned over more than fifty years, the tally of murdered people approached three hundred. Her job as a nurse during World War I left a lasting mark on her career because during that period she developed a special interest in chemistry, which later influenced her writing style and using poison became her forte. Consequently, many of her literary characters fell victim to some kind of toxin. However, a large part of her works features a wide array of more violent and manual death causes. Most of those crimes are solved by one of Christie’s two most prominent detectives, either a professional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot or a white-haired old lady Jane Marple. Due to their different lifestyles, both their characters and investigation methods largely differ, but they are both successful when tackling a crime. This paper attempts to offer deeper insight into some of the murder methods Christie resorted to in her oeuvre while simultaneously...
Built for Europeans who came on the Orient Express
2016
The Pera Palace Hotel has long been a site of transnational interest. Its original intent when it was built in 1892 was to host passengers of the Orient Express, and its nickname as the “oldest European hotel of Turkey” aptly reflects this heritage. It has been the setting of Anglophone world literature, such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt, and, perhaps most famously, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. But the hotel also reflects Turkey’s own turbulent history from Istanbul’s luxurious Belle Epoque to the oftentimes nostalgic luxury of a postmodern metropolis, with Room 101 being converted into a memorial for Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, thus designating the space as museum-hotel. Pera Palas (1998), the play by Turkish-American playwright Sinan Ünel, is a complex spatio-temporal interlacing of the hotel’s/nation’s history with that of a Turkish family and their Anglo-American friends and lovers encompassi...
Bulletin of The Faculty of Languages & Translation, 2018
This research aims at investigating the concept of justice in crime fiction as represented in Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934). It is an attempt to bring fresh perspectives and interpretations to the genre-its definition, origin, history and elements are all explored-through a comparative analysis of two different writers in order to discover new readings and discussions of their biography and literary legacy. In addition, the researcher aimed at comparing between the male/female and American/British manipulation of the chosen works, especially Christie can be considered an extension to Poe. Furthermore, the researcher explored two different ages in two different countries in order to monitor the changes occurred to the genre, starting from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. In addition, the similarities and dissimilarities between Poe's short story and Christie's novel are all examined. This study also manipulates a general background of crime fiction as a genre, its origin, characteristics, stages for development and its aim to arrive at the truth and achieving justice among societies. The researcher manipulates a comparative study between the two-selected works to discover the hidden motives beneath the crime, the character of the detectives, the clues, solutions, criminals and how to achieve justice at the end of the selected works.