Akhnaton

Name: Akhnaton
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780002110389

by Unknown Author

157 pages1973CollinsISBN 9780002110389

Drama

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About this book

Set in 1350 BC, the legend of Akhnaton tells of the Pharoah's attempt to convince his nation to abandon their old 'pagan' god Amon and to turn to the worship of a new deity, the monotheistic sun god, Aton. Introduced to the legend by Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamun's tomb, when she met him in Luxor in 1931, Agatha Christie became fascinated by both the story and the society in which it took place. Her painstaking researches led to this retelling of the story in the form of a highly readable and dramatic two-hour play. Akhnaton was written by Agatha Christie in 1937, when her interest in Egyptology from her travels with her archaeologist husband was at its height. Probably her most serious play, it was deemed too ambitious to be performed, and it went unknown and unpublished until Collins released a hardback edition in 1973. Never paperbacked or published subsequently, this rare edition has become the Holy Grail for Agatha Christie collectors, keen to learn more about this unique drama and to discover its relevance alongside her other Egyptian books such as Death Comes As the End, Death on the Nile, Appointment With Death and Come, Tell Me How You Live. Now this facsimile edition of the original hardback at last gives Christie fans the chance to discover for themselves one of Agatha Christie's most highly sought after and exotic creations.

Publication Details

Publisher: Collins
Published: 1973
Pages: 157
ISBN: 9780002110389
Language: en

About Unknown Author

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay, Devon, in the United Kingdom, the daughter of a wealthy American stockbroker. Her father died when she was eleven years old. Her mother taught her at home, encouraging her to write at a very young age. At the age of 16, she went to Mrs. Dryden's finishing school in Paris to study singing and piano. In 1914, at age 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, an aviator in the Royal Flying Corps. While he went away to war, she worked as a nurse and wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which wasn't published until four years later. When her husband came back from the war, they had a daughter. In 1928 she divorced her husband, who had been having an affair. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and a Catholic. She was happy in the early years of her second marriage, and did not divorce her husband despite his many affairs. She travelled with her husband's job, and set several of her novels set in the Middle East. Most of her other novels were set in a fictionalized Devon, where she was born. Agatha Christie is credited with developing the "cozy style" of mystery, which became popular in, and ultimately defined, the Golden Age of fiction in England in the 1920s and '30s, an age of which she is considered to have been Queen. In all, she wrote over 66 novels, numerous short stories and screenplays, and a series of romantic novels using the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was the single most popular mystery writer of all time. In 1971 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.