书名：An Autobiography阿加莎克里斯蒂自传
作者：Agatha Christie
出版社名称：HarperCollins
出版时间：2017
语种：英文
ISBN：9780007314669
商品尺寸：12.9 x 3.5 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：568
★讲述《无人生还》《东方快车谋杀案》《尼罗河上的惨案》创作背后的故事
★还原缔造大侦探波洛和马普尔小姐经过
★扣人心弦的故事与丰富的人生吸引了全世界读者
★隐藏多位人物原型和诡计来源
★两次勇敢追爱失踪的一周作为考古学家夫人环游世界

An Autobiography《阿加莎克里斯蒂自传》是阿加莎亲笔撰写的传记。本书动笔于一九五零年，直到十五年后，作家七十五岁时才完成。在这部自传中，阿加莎·克里斯蒂以轻松、愉快和夹携幽默的笔触，生动而真实地描述了自己的一生。尽管书中回避了作者生活中的某个较重要的片断——如一九六二年十二月间的突然出走，“失踪”了十天，但总的来说，此书是克里斯蒂那快乐而又艰难的一生的真实写照。

《阿加莎克里斯蒂自传》不仅叙述了作者本人的丰富经历，而且还透过一个普通人的双眼向我们展示了十九世纪末到二十世纪中期这动荡不安的大半个世纪的历史侧面。克里斯蒂云游四方，这不仅丰富了她个人的阅历，也充实了她的创作素材，使她的作品的故事背景不局限于一时一地，多发生在旅途中。在她的自传中，克里斯蒂生动的描绘出世界各地的异域风光和民俗人情。书中有她生活中经历的坎坷，也有她从事创作的甘苦，更有她为自己的理想而追求中的磨难。内容丰富，叙述生动，读起来兴味盎然。

Millions of fans the world over got to know her beloved characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and the rest, yet for decades little was known about their creators. Dame Agatha Christie was a woman who scrupulously kept her private life hidden from view, dodging the press, granting no interviews, and even, for a brief time, famously disappearing. But shortly after the great lady’s death, the silence was broken when An Autobiography was finally published.
The witty, insightful, and immensely entertaining reflections of a marvelous talent, An Autobiography is as compulsively readable as Christie’s novels. In her inimitable style, a brilliant eccentric whose life encapsulated her times sheds light on her past, including her childhood in Victorian England, her volunteer work during World WarⅡ, and of course, her phenomenal career. Agatha Christie’s An Autobiography brings into sharp focus a beloved and enduring literary icon whose imagination continues to mesmerize readers to this very day.
Review
‘Wonderfully easy to read and engrossing.’-- The Times

‘The best thing she has ever written.’-- Woman’s Own

‘Agatha Christie’s most absorbing mystery – the story of her own unusual life. She has put it all on record: her early romances; a broken (and a happy) marriage; strange events on the path to roaring success.’ --Daily Mail

‘A wonderful book – written with a delight in the gradual unfolding of 75 years through the eyes of an exceptional old lady and writer.’ --Financial Times
全世界都知道阿加莎·克里斯蒂是侦探小说女王，都熟识她笔下的名侦探等有趣的故事。而身为善于描绘的作家，她将如何讲述自己的一生？

作为女性：从淘气儿童到魅力少女，从女儿、妹妹到妻子、母亲，从对爱失望到重获幸福，阿加莎那些优雅的建议如今听来依旧时髦、实用。
作为作家：从兴趣爱好到职业，作品渐渐畅销，并开创新的创作领域……阿加莎对立志入此行的年轻人的教诲皆句句发自肺腑。
作为旅行爱好者：与爱人周游世界，独自踏入东方，不同心境的阿加莎写出超个性的攻略。
作为一个英国人：经历两次世界大战的阿加莎，对祖国、战争分别怀有深情的守护与入骨的憎恨。
读过她的书，再认识这个人，我们将会有更深刻的感触。
Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography.
Over the three decades since her death on 12 January 1976, many of Agatha Christie’s readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life. From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, Agatha shares the details of her varied and sometimes complex life with real passion and openness.

阿加莎·克里斯蒂原名为阿加莎·玛丽·克拉丽莎·米勒，1890年9月15日生于英国德文郡托基的阿什菲尔德宅邸。她几乎没有接受过正规的教育，但酷爱阅读，尤其痴迷于歇洛克·福尔摩斯的故事。
一战期间，阿加莎·克里斯蒂成了一名志愿者。战争结束后，她创作了自己的第1部侦探小说《斯泰尔斯庄园奇案》。几经周折，作品于1920年正式出版，由此开启了克里斯蒂辉煌的创作生涯。1926年，《罗杰疑案》由哈珀柯林斯出版公司出版。这部作品一举奠定了阿加莎·克里斯蒂在侦探文学领域不可撼动的地位。阿加莎·克里斯蒂的创作生涯持续了50余年，总共创作了80部侦探小说。她的作品畅销全世界100多个国家和地区，累计销量已经突破20亿册。阿加莎·克里斯蒂是柯南·道尔之后伟大的侦探小说作家，是侦探文学黄金时代的开创者和集大成者。1971年，英国女王授予克里斯蒂爵士称号，以表彰其不朽的贡献。
1976年1月12日，阿加莎·克里斯蒂逝世于英国牛津郡沃灵福德家中，被安葬于牛津郡的圣玛丽教堂墓园，享年85岁。

Agatha Christiewas born in Torquay in 1890 and became, quite simply, the best-selling novelist in history. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, written towards the end of the First World War, introduced us to Hercule Poirot, who was to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. She is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 100 foreign countries. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Part I Ashfield
Part II ‘Girls and Boys Come Out to Play’
Part III Growing Up
Part IV Flirting, Courting, Banns Up, Marriage
Part V War
Part VI Round the World
Part VII The Land of Lost Content
Part VIII Second Spring
Part IX Life with Max
Part X The Second War
Part XI Autumn
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood. I had a home and a garden that I loved; a wise and patient Nanny; as father and mother two people who loved each other dearly and made a success of their marriage and of parenthood.
Looking back I feel that our house was truly a happy house. That was largely due to my father, for my father was a very agreeable man. The quality of agreeableness Is not much stressed nowadays. People tend to ask if a man is clever, industrious, if he contributes to the well-being of the community, if he ‘counts’ in the scheme of things. But Charles Dickens puts the matter delightfully in David Copperfield:
‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty ?’ 1 enquired cautiously. ‘Oh what an agreeable man he is!’ exclaimed Peggotty.
Ask yourself that question about most of your friends and acquaintances, and you will perhaps be surprised at how seldom your answer will be the same as Peggotty’s.
By modem standards my father would probably not be approved of. He was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway.
He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his dub. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the dub, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner. During the season, he spent his days at the Cricket Club, of which he was President. He also occasionally got up amateur theatricals. He had an enormous number of friends and loved enter- taming them. There was one big dinner party at our home every week, and he and my mother went out to dinner usually another two or three times a week.
It was only later that I realized what a much loved man he was. After his death, letters came from all over the world. And locally tradesmen, cabmen, old employees — again and again some old man would come up to me and say: ‘Ah! I remember Mr Miller well. I’ll never forget him. Not many like him nowadays.’
Yet he had no outstanding characteristics. He was not particularly intelligent. I think that he had a simple and loving heart, and he really cared for his fellow men. He had a great sense of humour and he easily made people laugh. There was no meanness in him, no jealousy, and he was almost fantastically generous. And he had a natural happiness and serenity.
My mother was entirely different. She was an enigmatic and arresting personality - more forceful than my father - startlingly original in her ideas, shy and miserably diffident about herself; and at bottom, I think, with a natural melancholy.
Servants and children were devoted to her, and her lightest word was always promptly obeyed. She would have made a first class educator. Anything she told you immediately became exciting and significant Sameness bored her and she would jump from one subject to another in a way that sometimes made her conversation bewildering. As my father used to tell her, she had no sense of humour. To that accusation she would protest in an injured voice: ‘Just because I don’t think certain stories of yours arc funny, Fred…’ and my father would roar with laughter.
She was about ten years younger than my father and she had loved him devotedly ever since she was a child of ten. All the time that he was a gay young man, flitting about between New York and the South of France, my mother, a shy quiet girl, sat at home, thinking about him, writing an occasional poem in her ‘album,’ embroidering a pocket-book for him. That pocket-book, incidentally, my father kept all his life.