Agatha Christie is the epitome of world literature. We are told that she has sold over two billion copies worldwide, and that her works have been translated more than 7,000 times into more than 100 languages. These claims are based on UNESCO's unreliable Index Translationum. Broad figures such as these really only tell part of the story, and instead act as marketing tools.
This project on "global Christie" seeks to go beyond the anecdotal and tell a much more interesting story about the worldwide translation and circulation of the Queen of Crime's significant oeuvre.
To this end, we're calling on the global crime fiction community to help build a database of Christie's works in translation. We invite you to contribute your knowledge of the earliest translations of each of Christie's works. You can view the collected (incomplete) data here.
If you would like to collaborate on this project, please contact Stewart King (stewart.king@monash.edu). You will be sent a link to enter the data. We only require the year that the earliest translation of a given book was published, but we also welcome the inclusion of the translated title. This database will be publicly available to all researchers and fans of Christie's work.
If you wish to be publicly acknowledged as a contributor to this project, we are very happy to include your name. Please let us know.