Agatha Christie Biography

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Christie as the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 2 billion copies, and her estate claims that her works come third in the rankings of the world's most-widely published books, behind only Shakespeare's works and the Bible. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author – having been translated into at least 103 languages.

Christie's stage play "The Mousetrap" holds the record for the longest initial run: it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952 and as of 2016 is still running after more than 25,000 performances.

In 2013, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association. On 15 September 2015, coinciding with Christie's 125th birthday, "And Then There Were None" was voted as the "World's Favourite Christie", followed closely by "Murder on the Orient Expres"s and "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work.