Content note: This post examines the publication history of Agatha Christie’s novel and the evolution of its title and associated rhyme. To document that history accurately, it includes direct quotations of period wording that contains racial slurs. Such language is unacceptable in modern usage; it appears here only as part of quoted historical material, for context and analysis.
Today I’d like to talk a little about Agatha Christie — more precisely, about one of her most famous works, the novel “Ten Little Niggers“. In Russian, both the novel and the 1987 Soviet film adaptation by Stanislav Govorukhin are still known under the title Desyat negrityat (“Ten Little Negroes”). In Russian usage, the word negrityonok historically functioned as a neutral racial descriptor rather than a slur, which partly explains why the title remained unchanged in that cultural context.
I first encountered this work in childhood — not through the book, but through Stanislav Govorukhin’s 1987 film adaptation, released in Russian as Desyat negrityat (and often referred to in English as Ten Little Indians). I saw it a year later, while vacationing at the seaside with my parents. The film was being shown at the resort cinema, and if I remember correctly, my younger brother and I even went without our parents.
I remember how that closed-circle mystery (Christie specialized in exactly that kind of structure), combined with an excellent cast and the oppressive atmosphere of the production, made an indelible impression on me. It didn’t exactly frighten me, but it was impossible to look away as, over the course of the story, nearly all the main characters disappear one by one. And yet — what could an eleven-year-old boy, which is what I was at the time, really understand of it? Back then I looked like this (not exactly a heartthrob, of course, but still reasonably presentable):
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