On the Orient Express

by Mark Malamud

Overview

A daring act of narrative modification and reinterpretation. By altering an event early in Christie's novel - there is no murder - the remaining text must re-adjust to accommodate the absence of the crime. On the Orient Express parodies and subverts the expectations of casual slaughter in the literary genre of detective fiction, and the result is a transformation of the original novel into something entirely different: an expression of redemption rather than of revenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780999446256
Publisher:	Regulus Press
Publication date:	07/19/2019
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Mark Malamud is a tail-end baby-boomer and master dogsbody. His collection of short stories, The Gymnasium, established the idea of literary taxidermy. His novel, Float the Pooch—which pits David Bowie against Stanley Kubrick against a background of alien invasion, future sex, and Yom Kippur—is widely unread.

Editorial Reviews

By touching the text as lightly as possible, Malamud guarantees that many — if not all — of the core elements that make Christie's work so satisfying are still there. And yet there is no murder. What, then, is the necessity of that brutal crime? Who is Christie—and who are we—to embrace such casual slaughter?

Dahlia Loup

It's as if someone returned from an alternate universe and handed you a copy of Christie's alternate novel.

Verbal Helix - Marta von Baugh

A fascinating way to think about the reading (and writing) of classical texts.

The Republic of Words - Jean Guile