by Max Barry

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Region: Forest

Auphelia

The South Pacific

Uan aa Boa wrote:Agatha Christie's novel was originally published in the UK as 10 Little N****rs, with that word in the title and throughout the text being changed to "Indian" for publication in the US, where it was considered problematic at an earlier stage. The book was published in the original form in the UK right through to 1985. With the original n-word in place, the rhyme is word for word the lyrics of an American song performed by black-faced minstrel acts, including the reference to Devon. It has nothing to do with people from India settling in the UK. So yes, it's racist.

That's certainly not very good at all, now is it? Well, I suppose I'll have to change directions, now won't I?

Ruinenlust wrote:Holy sweet hell. Okay, so Agatha Christie moves from my awesome author list to my 10 Little Sh!tters list.

Oh, she's a wonderful novelist and her works are quite nice. Reading original editions of her works, however, does reveal some rather unfortunate statements about (among other things): Africans, Asians, Italians, Jews, Catholics, and Arabs. Of course, most of these distasteful statements come from those otherwise characterised as terrible people (many claim that this emphasises their villainy) and thus might indicate Christie herself was not racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic.

She was also a a British woman whose writing was written in the first half of the twentieth century, so it's quite possibly she at least had some distasteful views we enlightened modern folk know to look down upon.

Middle Barael wrote:Oh ok, so it is actually racist then. I haven’t read Agatha Christie, so I did not know what this is from. I simply went off of what I heard

Yes, it is. I had been under the wrong impression for years as to what sort of Indians were being referred to, foolishly thinking only people from India would be called Indians, not realising North America was also India (the only logical conclusion to the moniker of their native peoples).

Middle Barael wrote:Oh now I understand. It’s not really racist then, simply bad taste, as you could’ve just as easily say and then there were none. Sorry

I usually advertise my posts multiple times before they're gone and had been planning to count down to the final line for the particularly obtuse, but I don't think that would be a wise decision given recent information.

Thus, I give you:

Can you solve this mysterious affair with style?

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